Chirping relaunched its vetting program last May after a hiatus of more than three years, but was suspended again after Elon Musk took over Twitter. However, Musk announced that Twitter will “tentatively” roll out Verified on December 2 and manually authenticate all verified accounts before the check kicks in.
Manually authenticating verified accounts is definitely a good idea because after Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the company started offering the blue checkmarks to even eligible Twitter Blue subscribers without actually verifying identities, which has led verified accounts to impersonate famous characters and brands.
In addition to announcing the tentative rollout of the check, Musk said Twitter checkmarks will now come in three colors: gold, gray and blue. Gold for companies, gray for governments and blue for private individuals.
Sorry for the delay, we will tentatively launch Verified on Friday next week.
Gold check for business, gray check for government, blue check for individuals (celebrities or not), and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check is activated.
Painful, but necessary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
Additionally, Musk said individuals can now have a tiny secondary logo, showing they belong to an organization if verified as such by that organization.
It’s not clear if Twitter will follow the same criteria as before to verify accounts or if it will be changed. Musk has promised a “longer explanation” about the verification next week, so we may get more clarity on that.
All individual verified humans will have the same blue check mark, as the boundary of what constitutes “remarkable” is otherwise too subjective.
Individuals may have a tiny secondary logo showing they belong to an organization if verified as such by that organization.
Longer explanation next week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
Hopefully the verification process makes more sense now and feels less haphazard because while Twitter offered more clarity on the verification process last year after the relaunch, the way Twitter verified accounts raised some questions and left the confused users as many accounts didn’t meet the criteria still managed to get the blue check mark.
Our GSMArena Twitter account has been denied verified status several times since last year as it is not “remarkable” enough, while accounts blatantly impersonating the GSMArena brand are freely operating on the social network, which is ironic and could lead to confusion.
With Musk promoting “free speech” and battling fake accounts and spam bots on Twitter, we expect the tech billionaire to fix the impersonation and implement a more transparent and workable verification process for everyone.
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