Elon Musk finally revealed his plans for Twitter Verified accounts Friday, or at least the key outlines of a new three-color system of check marks that will launch in one week: Gold for companies, gray for government and blue for individuals.
Will Musk demand $8 straight for this privilege? That’s what he’s been strongly leaning toward – but he didn’t say in the Friday reveal whether check marks would require immediate payment or subscription. He did say they could take time to “activate” because they need to be manually verified: “Painful, but necessary,” he said.
Musk buried the news in a tweet-reply thread started by Robert Reich, whose credentials as a Berkeley professor and Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton should telegraph what he thinks of the new Twitter CEO. Reich slammed Musk on Twitter, Musk demanded $8 from Reich in his now-signature troll move, and out of nowhere an account that goes by Crypto King interceded with a question about his edit function not working.
Elon responded to Crypto King: “Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week. Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary.”
Musk has made known his distaste for the old Twitter’s verification system, with check marks given out to celebrities, “notable” people (and in many cases, friends of the company) and anyone else the platform deemed worthy.
“All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes ‘notable’ is otherwise too subjective. Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org. Longer explanation next week.”
Sounds like more details will come after the holiday weekend, meaning it won’t be much of a holiday weekend for Twitter’s remaining corps of backend engineers and designers. Also in the thread, Musk reiterated his strong position against impersonation.
“Deliberate impersonation/deception will result in account suspension,” he tweeted. “Organizational affiliation, bio and follower count distinguish between people who genuinely have the exact same name. We shall see how it goes.”
