By Brian Fung | CNN
Twitter stated Tuesday night that to resolve ambiguity about which accounts on its platform have been identity-verified — versus these merely paying $8 a month for a blue examine mark on their profiles — the corporate will introduce a brand new, grey examine mark as a part of an “official” label.
A screenshot posted by Esther Crawford, a director of product administration on the firm, confirmed how the brand new label would seem. The screenshot displayed Twitter’s personal account profile, which included the usual blue examine mark beside its show identify in addition to a grey examine mark and the phrase “Official” beneath its account deal with.
A go to to Twitter’s presently reside profile didn't show the grey examine mark, suggesting the characteristic has not but been applied.
“Not all beforehand verified accounts will get the ‘Official’ label and the label just isn't accessible for buy,” Crawford tweeted. “Accounts that can obtain it embrace authorities accounts, business firms, enterprise companions, main media retailers, publishers and a few public figures.”
Crawford additionally confirmed that the forthcoming choice to pay for a blue examine mark is not going to embrace an id verification requirement.
“We’ll proceed to experiment with methods to distinguish between account sorts,” Crawford stated.
In latest days, Twitter has been met with widespread criticism over its plan to vary the which means of the blue examine mark away from figuring out confirmed people, notably public figures, towards a brand new which means signifying that a person has paid for Twitter Blue, the corporate’s subscription service.
Election safety specialists warned of the probability that unhealthy actors may pay for a blue examine mark, then change their show names to impersonate authorities officers or different authoritative sources of knowledge.
After showing to prepared the characteristic for rollout over the weekend, Twitter later determined to delay the deployment till after the midterms, CNN has beforehand reported. Additionally over the weekend, Twitter’s new proprietor Elon Musk vowed that accounts caught participating in undisclosed impersonation can be completely banned with out warning, reversing earlier guarantees that so-called “permabans” can be extraordinarily uncommon.
Musk’s announcement got here after quite a few superstar accounts used their verified standing to mock Musk’s paid verification plan, by modifying their accounts to resemble his.