Elon Musk plans to restart the verification process on Twitter next Friday. People get blue ticks, companies get gold and governments get grey. Whether the user is actually the person concerned should be checked manually again in the future.
Musk had previously replaced the original verification process, which required users to identify themselves to Twitter, with a payment solution. For a blue tick it was enough to book the “Twitter Blue” subscription for 8 US dollars. What followed was a predicted fiasco. Within a short period of time, a large number of fake accounts imitated companies, artists or athletes without control, causing distortions.
For Twitter, however, the situation was also unsustainable. Along with the threat of penalties from regulators like the FTC, this change fueled the trend toward a platform that poses high risk for advertisers, as analyzed by The Verge. The consequence: The departure of companies that advertise on the platform and have been keeping their distance anyway since the beginning of Musk's chaos days accelerated.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
According to Musk, Twitter Blue should therefore only return once it has been ensured that there is no significant number of imitations. As he now concedes, this is done via a manual authentication process, which he describes as “painful but necessary.”
When asked about the $8 subscription, Musk explained in another Twitter post that all individuals should get the same blue tick. However, it should be possible for employees of an organization to receive a secondary logo if they confirm their identity. Musk has announced a longer statement for the coming week.
General amnesty after vote
The restart of Twitter Blue and the verification process does not mean that Twitter's days of chaos are over. Starting next week there will be a general amnesty for suspended accounts unless they violate a law or have spread an “outrageous” amount of spam. Musk determined that after he voted on his Twitter account, as he did on Donald Trump's account before. The effects of this can hardly be estimated. The process is scheduled to start next week.
These votes go against Musk's original announcement that a moderation council would decide who comes back to the platform going forward. Musk himself did not actually want to take action until he was deployed. Because activists have allegedly called for a Twitter boycott of advertisers, he moved away from the plan. Instead, he now wants to technically limit the reach of hate speech.