Twitter has launched its updated account verification program. Earlier, every account had a blue tick, but now there is a development in which some accounts have turned Gold.
Earlier on 26 November, CEO Elon Musk, took to the microblogging site to make the announcement. “Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week,” he had posted.
“Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates,” the SpaceX owner added.
He had earlier tweeted about the usage of different colours for different organisations and individuals but fleshed out the details just recently.
“All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective,” he tweeted.
According to a report by The Verge, the microblogging platform’s ‘Twitter Blue’ subscriptions rolled out despite warnings from Twitter’s own trust and safety staff. Soon afterwards, numerous ‘verified’ accounts began to impersonate well-known personalities or brands. The chaos began with a fake Nintendo account, which posted the image of the well-known game character Mario raising a middle finger at the Twitter bird.
Meanwhile, another fake Twitter account emerged for ‘Eli Lilly’, the pharmaceutical company. It had tweeted that insulin had become free. As per a report by The Verge, this repelled numerous advertisers from the platform. Subsequently, Musk pulled off the 7.99 USD service in a matter of days after its release.
Musk had taken the matter in his own hands and tweeted that any account that tried to impersonate someone else would be disabled, unless its user declared it as a parody account.
Coming to the current multi-coloured verification system, Musk called it ‘painful, but necessary’. He claimed that a ‘longer explanation’ on how the system would work would come out ‘next week’.Â
Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, formed in 2006 with headquarters in San Francisco, California, for $44 billion in late October. The world’s richest man made changes to the company’s daily operations, which included firing two-thirds of Twitter’s workforce in addition to executives who were in charge of the platform’s censorship, privacy, and cybersecurity.
On December 9, the company began working on a software update, according to Musk, that will inform users whether they have been “shadow banned” and why.
“Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal,” he had tweeted.
(With inputs from ANI)
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