Actual Verified Users Will Now Have Gold Checks On Twitter
Elon Musk announced that companies will now be verified with gold check marks on Twitter as part of an improvement to the platform's verification system.
This article is more than 2 years old
Elon Musk made a new announcement on Twitter today at 2:10 pm. He has announced changes to his verification that will hopefully increase the credibility of his new system. Businesses will gain a gold check mark rather than a blue check mark. This will help prevent impersonators.
He announced prior that the new verification system would be released on the 29th of this month. In recent posts, it would appear it has been pushed back to December 2nd. This is likely caused due to his mass firing and the walkout that happened last week.
Musk had previously tweeted that they “probably use [a] different color check for organizations than individuals.” However, this is the first time we have gotten the actual colors. There are two more checks and indicators being provided to consumers of the social media platform.
There will be a grey checkmark to represent the government. This will help prevent misleading and false information from being spread by fake government accounts. The last check will be a tiny logo showing if they are verified as part of an organization.
This differs greatly from sites like LinkedIn, where you can claim to work for a company and show up as one of their employees on their account. Each of these gold checks, grey checks, company logos, and blue checks, according to Musk “all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check activates.”
The manual checking will help prevent data breaches, and the fee of $8 will help prevent bot spamming from overloading the system. This will help prevent delays that individuals may experience and reduce errors caused by overwork.
The manual checking process has not been revealed on what information they will require to proceed. This could be anything from photo ID to social security information. Businesses could face a much more rigorous check due to the past blue check incidents. This could include EIN verification on the state level.
This will create new specialized positions at Twitter, likely opening new job openings that can stem the rising tech industry downsizing. It is not yet verified whether the government’s grey check and the industry’s gold check will need also to pay this $8 monthly fee.
Celebrities do not get the same diverse treatment, including Elon Musk himself. They will get the blue check, just like everyone else. As Musk has stated, the reason for this is “as [the] boundary of what constitutes ‘notable’ is otherwise too subjective.”
What celebrities can do is get the small logo verification of the studios that they belong to. Alongside the blue check and the studio’s gold check. This creates a strong system and interconnects social networks to prevent misrepresentation.
Sadly, it should have been something thought out before its release a month ago as much of the damage had already been done within only 48 hrs. An example is Eli Lilly’s pharmaceutical company and the individuals that rely on their insulin products.
There have also been talks of Twitter requiring that you use the check system in the future to use their posting services. This is part of Musk’s mission to stop miscommunication and misrepresentation. As he unbans several accounts and listened to his user base using polls to determine the direction of Twitter.
