Twitter’s de-verification debacle, explained

Previously verified Twitter users saw their blue checkmarks flicker and fade in real time on Thursday as the social media company pivoted away from the old checkmarks and towards its paid Twitter Blue policy. Elon Musk, which Twitter bought in November for $44 billionhas been dangling for months with a promise to uncheck “legacy” verified accounts (aka people who had a free check) — freeing the social media platform from what Musk called a “king and jack system.”

It’s gone as well as you’d expect given Twitter’s recent history of chaotic implementations. Anyone with $8 a month to spare and a phone number to verify their identity can buy the verified tick. People affiliated with Twitter now get a square badge, and there are also several other options for government accounts or large corporations. The pope was briefly stripped of his blue tick on Thursday – hard! – but it was replaced on Friday by a gray one, denoting a “government or multilateral organization”, for example.

Doesn’t this create confusion about who is real and who isn’t?

The short answer is yes. Almost immediately after the snap of the Twitter check, people started setting up fake profiles and pretending to be officially official Twitter accounts. This was especially troublesome for unverified government accounts, such as New York City’s, which were immediately parodied. The New York City official Twitter posted a message saying it was the authentic account, and another account, with a simple lever and the profile picture with the same NYC logo as the official account, responded that it is in fact the real one account wash. account. (The girls fight!)

Plenty of other parody jokes have sprung from the mess, including a really nasty-looking fake New York Times Cooking tweet, which shares a meme recipe of a hand-shaped M&M cookie over Greek salad called “King’s Hand.” Another account popped up posing as JK Rowling. In a now-deleted tweet (later spread as a screenshot), Rowling’s impersonation said, “I want to take this opportunity to apologize for all the things I have said and done that have caused such material damage to the transgender community […] I was on Ambien for a very long time and didn’t realize how my actions affected other people or even where I was. The tweet has since suspended the poster.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has struggled with authentication-related chaos. In November, when Twitter Blue first went live, a number of accounts appeared posing as previously verified, official accounts. This included a Nintendo impersonator posting an image of Mario knocking people out, and a parody of Rockstar’s account announcing a fake Grand Theft Auto showcase.

What is Twitter Blue?

Twitter Blue is a paid service that adds a blue check mark to the title of your account on Twitter. It also gives paid users access to certain features, such as the edit button, two-factor authentication via SMS, and the ability to compose tweets of up to 10,000 characters. Twitter Blue subscribers also get what’s called a “boost” to their tweet rank, meaning they rank higher in search results or replies. It costs $8 per month or $84 per year. Any Twitter account that has been around for more than 30 days can purchase a blue check mark.

The only requirement is to verify a phone number. The original blue checks were largely intended as verification of public figures, a way to avoid impersonation of celebrities, news organizations, and journalists or government agencies. reported The Verge that an influx of hoax accounts during Hurricane Sandy was, in part, the inspiration for its creation. Now the tick just means you were willing to pay for it.

Twitter Blue subscribers are labeled with the blue checkmark, of course, but also with a popup readable by hovering over the checkmark. “This account has been verified because they subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number,” it says. The gray check mark on an account such as the Pope’s reads that it has been verified “because it is a government or multilateral organization account.” The Gold Checkmarks have been relegated to “official organization”.[s] on Twitter,” meaning the company pays a reported $1,000 per month for the badge, through the Authentication for Organizations program. However, it is free for the 10,000 most followed organizations on Twitter.

Who actually pays for Twitter Blue?

An estimated 600,000 to 635,000 people subscribe to Twitter Blue, according to independent researcher and software developer Travis Brown. Twitter has a total of about 450 million monthly active users, according to reports.

Many celebrities, such as basketball superstar LeBron James and author Stephen King, have scoffed at the idea of ​​paying for a Twitter Blue subscription. The simple answer is that there’s really no incentive for them – as large accounts, they already have a ton of people reading their tweets. They don’t necessarily need that increase. The other “benefits” aren’t enough to influence them either. The verification process is so minimal that it doesn’t mean much to say their account is genuine either; someone else can seemingly get a blue check in his place. Various celebrities said they are leaving the platform, or at least considering it, without a more rigorous form of verification.

James and King were two of the more outspoken celebrities to talk about verification — or their lack of desire to pay for it. Musk responded by saying he personally paid for their Twitter Blue subscriptionsas well as that of William Shatner, seemingly dismissing his previous statements that Twitter Blue would give “power to the peopleand stop giving preferential treatment to the Twitter elite.

Shatner tweeted “I accept” on Musk’s free Twitter Blue subscription, while King informed his followers of the check — that he hadn’t paid for it. James hasn’t tweeted about verification since the mass removal of blue ticks.