Let’s take 2!
After a completely rushed and botched attempt to give everyone verification ticks on Twitter failed miserably in Elon’s first week in charge, it seems they have gone back to the lab and are ready to try again.
So how is it going to work this time?
Well, Musk kept his explanation simple:
“Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not)”
Yep - different coloured check marks for different kinds of accounts.
It seems like an incredibly simple solution, but it should hopefully prevent a few of the issues that Twitter encountered the first time (users immediately impersonating existing brands/profiles once they received the tick).
App researcher Alessandro Paluzzi posted some mock-up images of what the new ticks might look like on each profile:
So what issues should we expect Musk and Co. to run into during the v2 rollout of this project?
The glaring issue is that people will still be able to impersonate celebs with relative ease. While the gold and grey ticks will prevent users from pretending to be the President of the United States or a major brand like Adidas, the blue tick will be the same for everyone, making it easy for imposer accounts to gain momentum.
Twitter has announced some safeguards here. All verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check activates and any change to a Twitter handle triggers a review before being reinstated. However, based on Elon’s infamous staff cuts recently, we don’t have a lot of faith in anything that is going to get done manually. Even Musk himself has labelled these precautions “Painful but necessary”.
Now we know about the ticks, let’s talk business - what’s it gonna cost to get one of those bad boys on your account?
If you’re based in America, the blue tick will set you back $8 per month. Elon has flagged that the price may be different depending on the country you are in, but the proof will be in the pudding once this thing has rolled out globally.
The verification process is being launched on Friday 2nd December (US). Who knows what will have happened by the time you are reading this - there might be multi-coloured ticks all over Twitter or it might be another flash-in-the-pan approach that gets pulled within 6 hours of launch.
No matter what happens, it’ll likely be entertaining, so get ready.
.png)
.png)
.png)
