Amid the verification chaos brought about by the $8 per month subscription to have verified Twitter accounts, the company is finally addressing complaints about possible confusion.
The company says that in addition to the blue check verification, select accounts will have the label "Official" and a gray checkmark on their profiles, 9to5 Mac writes.
Twitter Aims To Resolve Ambiguity About Account Verifications
In an announcement by Twitter product management director Esther Crawford, she says that this change in strategy was in accordance with the plans to ramp up Twitter Blue's subscription service.
Crawford claims that the new gray checkmark will be available for those accounts eligible for an "Official" label, including government accounts, commercial companies, businesses, media, publishers, and public figures.
She also says that there are no guidelines yet on how people can apply for this label, but not all previously verified accounts will get the label as well.
Additionally, these accounts that have gray checkmarks will not have to pay for their verification, unlike those users with blue checkmarks.
Furthermore, the blue check verified accounts would not be required to present any form of identification, while the gray check verified accounts will.
However, 9to5 Mac shares that this will not resolve any problems with confusing which verified accounts are legitimate or not, as users will not see the "Official" label unless they tap on the user's account.
In recent days, Twitter has been at the forefront of criticism due to its plans to change how the blue checkmark verification will work on the platform.
This follows new Twitter owner Elon Musk's announcement that the company will now start charging users $8 per month for account verifications.
This will take verifications from individuals, particularly public figures, unless they have conformed with and paid for the terms of Twitter Blue's subscription service, CNN Business reports.
Experts And Members Of The Public Are Alarmed About The Possible Consequences
According to election security experts, there is a huge likelihood that bad actors or cyber criminals might pay for a blue checkmark and use their accounts to impersonate public officials.
This impersonation can lead these criminals to extort and threaten people while posing as government officials or other authoritative sources of information, harming public trust in the process.
ABC News writes that Twitter was ready to roll out the new verification feature over the weekend, but the company decided to hold off the launch until the midterm elections.
Twitter delayed the deployment of the feature so that possible misinformation from fake impersonation accounts would not interfere with the results of the elections.
With this, Musk also decided to crack down on all accounts engaging in undisclosed impersonations, permanently banning them without any sort of heads up.
This was in contrast to the CEO's promise of free speech on the platform, even going back on his words that there will not be any "permabans" or if there will be any, they will be rare.
CNN Business notes that this comes around after numerous celebrities have been suspended on the platform for using their verified status to mock Musk's verification plan by impersonating him.
KKTV reports that should the feature's launch push through, about 423,000 verified accounts under the outgoing system will be affected.
Related Article: New Phishing Scam Exploits Twitter's Verification Issues
