As Twitter prepares to give away verified badges for money, it’s revealed to be a two-tiered one for better classification.
The platform’s Blue subscription head has confirmed that an additional “official” mark is set to differentiate certain accounts from Blue-verified users on Twitter. This would hopefully clear the confusion of potential misinformation from the accounts with verified badges.
Twitter’s New Verification Rules
As we wait for the revamped Blue subscription to roll out – where anyone can pay $8 a month to get a verified badge, criticisms of potential impersonation grew in the community, where many blamed Elon Musk for more confusion.
Letting anyone pay for a verified badge on Twitter will only increase the trust in their malicious campaigns if the account was set up by scammers or impersonators with the aim of hijacking conversations and spreading misinformation.
Well, the platform’s integrity lead Yoel Roth said they have plans to “ramp up a proactive review of Blue Verified accounts that show signs of impersonating another user.” This could work to an extent, though, as with the example from Elon Musk – who banned all the accounts impersonating him with a verified badge on.
He earlier warned that Twitter would ban accounts without any warning if they seem to impersonate others – without having a “parody” tag on their profile. Now, the platform’s VP of new Blue subscription, Esther Crawford, said they’re planning to set up two badges for better understanding.
A lot of folks have asked about how you'll be able to distinguish between @TwitterBlue subscribers with blue checkmarks and accounts that are verified as official, which is why we’re introducing the “Official" label to select accounts when we launch. pic.twitter.com/0p2Ae5nWpO
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 8, 2022
Under this system, Twitter will set a separate “official” label for “select” accounts, like the “government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures,” to be more clear.
The official label had previously been spotted on some of Twitter’s internal builds, but this is the first time someone from the company has confirmed its existence. While all other accounts who purchased the verified badge through a Blue subscription will have a regular blue checkmark.
