Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk on Friday announced that the company will tentatively roll out a new ‘Verified’ service next week with multi-colored badges to differentiate between companies, governments, and individuals.
The announcement from Musk comes after the failure of the paid blue verification check system. Under the new system, Musk tweeted that companies will get a gold checkmark, and accounts of government officials will get a grey checkmark, which is somewhat similar to the “official” checkmark that the site is currently trying out with some prominent accounts.
He further added that all verified accounts (subscribers who have already paid for the service) will be first “manually authenticated” by the company staff before the check activates. However, no detailed explanation was given on what manual authentication would involve.
In addition, the blue checkmark will be dedicated to individuals irrespective of whether they are celebrities or not. This means that the blue checkmark will be applicable to both legacy verified accounts as well as those who buy Twitter’s new $7.99 per month paid plan.
Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week.
Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.
Painful, but necessary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
In a separate tweet, Musk explained that individuals can also qualify for a “secondary tiny logo” representing that they belong to a certain organization if verified as such by that organization. He added that decision to apply the blue checkmark to all individual accounts was taken as what constitutes as notability of a person is otherwise too subjective.
All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective.
Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org.
Longer explanation next week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
For those unaware, Musk launched Twitter’s new verification method on November 9, 2022. But quickly after the launch, Chief Twit had to immediately suspend the experiment for November 29, 2022 launch, as many impersonators started mimicking corporations, brands, sportsmen, and celebrities.
However, this Tuesday, the Tesla CEO said that he had put the service on hold until “there is a high level of stopping impersonation.” Currently, there is no clarity if the new verification scheme will roll out at the same time as the relaunch of Twitter Blue.
Earlier yesterday, Musk said that the microblogging site will offer all suspended accounts who had not violated any rules “a general amnesty” starting next week based on the results of this Wednesday’s polls.
More than three million users took the poll with 72.4 per cent voting “Yes”, while 27.6 per cent voted “No”. He replied to the poll saying, “The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”
Vox Populi, Vox dei, which in Latin translates to “The voice of the people, the voice of God”.
