Elon Musk on Friday said Twitter will tentatively be rolling out a new multicolored verification checkmark next week. This comes after the Twitter CEO achieved disastrous results by equitably distributing blue checkmarks to every account, that paid for verification.
Musk said, under this scheme, companies will get a gold checkmark; government officials will get a grey checkmark — probably similar to the “official” checkmark it’s currently trying out with some prominent accounts — and the blue checkmark will be dedicated to individuals even if they are not celebrities. That would mean that the blue checkmark will be used with legacy verified accounts and folks who buy Twitter’s new $8 per month paid plan.
Musk added that the company aims to manually authenticate all verifications before the new verification system goes live.
Individuals can have a second tiny logo to note if they are part of a certain organisation, he said, adding that the organisation also has to verify that the individual represents them or works with them in some way. The decision to apply blue checkmark to all individual accounts was taken as notability of a person is a subjective matter, said Musk.
New terms
Earlier this month, Musk paused the revamped Twitter Blue programme and said it would resume on November 29. However, this week, he put the plan on hold until “there is a high level of confidence in stopping impersonation.” This was the first time he talked about using multiple colors for verification.
He didn’t specify if this new verification scheme will occur at the same time as the rollout of the relaunch of Twitter Blue. This verification relaunch could be for existing verified accounts, companies and government officials, and not paid subscribers, at the moment.
In another move to stop spam accounts from exploiting Twitter Blue, last week, the company changed its terms so that newly created accounts have to wait 90 days from the date of account creation before they can buy a Twitter Blue subscription.
When Twitter first rolled out the new verification programme on November 9, many accounts began impersonating brands, athletes and celebrities. That caused the company to halt the project immediately. Multicoloured verification is a step towards halting this impersonation.
Musk also said on Friday that Twitter will offer all suspended accounts “a general amnesty” starting next week based on the result of the poll he ran a few days ago.