Twitter is currently on fire. With Elon Musk as owner and CEO, the company has changed many rules and regulations users (and advertisers) had come to expect from the platform. The latest drama, however, concerns Twitter verification, and it’s throwing a wrench in the ability to tell which accounts are real and which are fake.
As originally conceived, the “blue checkmark” on Twitter was more than just a status symbol. Twitter’s verification process served as a means of identification: If you saw a blue check next to an account for, say, for a politician, you knew that account was official, and not being run by an impersonator. Accounts needed to be vetted to prove both their identity and noteworthiness before receiving a blue check, which is a good thing.
Musk, however, decided anyone should be able to buy a blue check by subscribing to Twitter Blue for $8 a month. Immediately following the change, identifying legitimate users was a challenge. In fact, Twitter Blue subscribers took advantage of the system to pull off pranks, impersonating accounts like Nintendo of America, President Biden, and, of course, Elon Musk himself.
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Twitter cracked down on this type of behavior, and the immediate issues thankfully stopped. Then Twitter rolled out a new white checkmark for verified accounts that lived underneath the user’s name (I guess two checkmarks are better than one?). However, Musk killed that plan almost immediately.
They then implemented a band-aid solution (to a problem they created, remember), assigning different colored checkmarks for various individuals and organizations: blue indicates a Twitter Blue subscriber or a legacy verified account; gold represents an official business account, including media organizations; and gray indicates a government account.
Furthermore, hovering your cursor or tapping a Blue checkmark would reveal whether that user was a legacy verified account, or simply paid for the privilege of the check, sort of defeating the purpose of Twitter Blue’s checkmark entirely, since no one respected anyone who had paid for the check. I suppose Musk felt similarly, seeing as Twitter recently edited this label to be the same across all blue check accounts:
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It’s a preposterous change for a site that wants to be taken seriously by the general public. Twitter now offers no way to tell whether a blue check account is a real person, or an impersonator paying $8 to steal their identity. Sure, you can assume the “@taylorswift13" account with 92.5 million followers is the official one, but Twitter won’t be able to confirm it for you. (I can, however, confirm Taylor does not pay for Twitter Blue.) Luckily, the gold and grey check system isn’t affected by this change, so media and political tweets can still be verified.
However, it’s going to be a bigger problem with smaller-scale celebrities and notable people: How can you, at a glance, know if an announcement or statement is coming from the person who tweeted it, when the platform won’t even tell you?
There’s still a way to check whether or not someone paid for Twitter Blue
Twitter might not like it, but you can still tell whether or not that blue check is earned or paid for. If you use Google Chrome, you can install the extension “Eight Dollars” to do what Twitter won’t. Once installed, the extension replaces the blue check with one of two new badges: “Verified,” or “Paid.”
When Eight Dollars first dropped, you needed to install it via GitHub. Now, it’s available on the Chrome Web Store, and can be as easily installed as any other Chrome extension. Use it to make sure the verified “person” who tweeted something really is who they say they are.