Twitter begins to roll out grey checkmarks for high-profile accounts • ZebethMedia
A day after announcing that it’d denote high-profile accounts in a way distinctive from the blue checkmark now available to all Twitter Blue subscribers, Twitter has begun to roll out new badges that denote particular categories of official accounts, including government accounts, major media outlets and some public figures. The move is an attempt to safeguard against information spreading and impersonation on the platform as Twitter grapples with the fallout of expanding eligibility for its blue checkmark, which was previously reserved for vetted, expressly-ID-verified Twitter users.
The new badges — a grey checkmark beneath the old blue verification checkmark — designate accounts as “Official,” in line with what app researcher Nima Owji revealed less than a week ago in Twitter’s public code. Accounts including ZebethMedia’s and several government officials, among them U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mitt Romney (R-UT), show the grey check as of this morning. But from a cursory search, there doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason to how the badges have been applied. For example, The Wall Street Journal’s account initially didn’t have a grey badge; The Information’s still doesn’t. Nor does Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s.
Image Credits: Twitter
Those oversights will be addressed in the coming days presumably — Twitter no doubt has thousands, if not millions, of high-profile accounts to comb through and vet. It’s work it made for itself — as alluded to earlier, the recently-launched Twitter Blue plan that grants subscribers a blue checkmark doesn’t include ID verification, a flaw Twitter users including comedians Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin exploited in the past week to show how easy it is to pose as another account.
Silverman, Griffin and others who created satirical handles were banned following Musk’s unilateral decision over the weekend to permanently bar from the platform impersonators who don’t make it clear that they’re engaging in parody.