Okay, so Twitter messed up its own verification system by putting the blue check, which previously indicated that the account has supplied information about its owner’s identity, accessible for purchase. Yesterday, or about a month ago in Elon Musk’s time, a solution was released: grey checks indicating that the account was official. Those checks had been rolled back by the end of the day.
Do you understand everything? Great. The grey “official” checks have returned after a period of impersonation, hoaxing, and other brand-unsafe conduct from freshly obtained blue checks.
Coca-Cola, Twitter, Wired, and Ars Technica have the new-old grey checks (but not @Verge, which, unlike this fake account, is our actual one). Musk, Twitter’s new owner this morning stated that there are too many “corrupt legacy Blue’verification’ checkmarks.”
Those “corrupt” cheques, of course, were unpaid — unlike the ones that have been wreaking havoc by impersonating businesses like Nintendo, Eli Lilly, and Tesla. A blue check costs $7.99 as part of Twitter Blue, and Musk described it as the “great leveler” when he eliminated grey checks yesterday. Esther Crawford, Twitter’s product lead (who now has a Twitter Blue-purchased Verified stamp on her account), said earlier this week that the grey checks will return, with an emphasis on “government and business organizations to begin with” rather than people.
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