Twitter is bringing back the Official label to combat the influx of fake accounts with blue ticks
Official gray ticks will be returned to celebrities, brands, media and other public figures, so that users can distinguish their real accounts from fake accounts that have purchased a “blue check” as part of a Twitter Blue subscription.
A few days ago, Twitter announced the introduction of an additional type of verification to help distinguish accounts if users really need to know if they’re real. Twitter Blue users received a “blue tick”, and some accounts for governments, companies or public figures were also marked with a gray mark with the words “Official” (actually, it’s technically white).
A few hours after launching the new type of verification, Musk stopped its deployment and tweeted that he had “killed” the official check box. Justifying this, Elon repeated his opinion that attaching the original tick to the Twitter Blue subscription democratizes the service. The blue check is a “great equalizer,” he said.
Blue check will be the great leveler
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
The vice president of Twitter, Esther Crawford, explained that the ticks will return — it’s just that the social network is first going to distribute them to ‘government and commercial entities.’
According to reports from The Verge, the gray mark has started to reappear on the accounts of brands and companies such as Coca-Cola and Nintendo of America. Own Twitter accounts are also grayed out. And some publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Wired have them too.
It’s unclear if the rollout has actually begun this time — perhaps it has something to do with the flurry of fake accounts that have flooded the social network since the $8 Twitter Blue subscription debuted. The ‘blue check’ has already been bought by the fake ‘Trump’, ‘Nintendo’, ‘LeBron James’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ himself. One of the most dangerous cases of the spread of a fake but ‘verified’ account was an account pretending to be the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lily, which tweeted that ‘the company will make insulin free for everyone.’
Twitter immediately implemented a new rule, according to which accounts created on November 9 and later will not be able to purchase a Twitter Blue subscription.
Elon Musk also announced that in the future, parody accounts will have to include the word ‘parody’ in their name, not just in their bio.
Going forward, accounts engaged in parody must include “parody” in their name, not just in bio
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2022
However, users can independently check whether the account is real by clicking on the blue icon for additional information or by simply installing a special browser extension.
A Twitter user has created a tool called Eight Dollars that will put information about your account verification type right into your feed. The extension was initially only available for Chrome, but New Zealand designer Walter Lim says it should work with Microsoft Edge as well as Firefox and Safari.
If you're confused by the new Twitter Verification feature, I've been working with some friends on a Chrome Extension that helps you tell the differencehttps://t.co/zXkwzhXIc1 pic.twitter.com/pHTBswBnnE
— Walter Lim (@iWaltzAround) November 10, 2022
Currently, the extension is only available on GitHub and must be installed manually in the browser’s developer mode.
