About a day after Twitter debuted its “official” gray tags on top-level accounts, CEO Elon Musk removed it.
“I just killed him,” he posted on Twitter on Wednesday morning.
The badge came out on Tuesday as an additional marker to authenticate an account.
However, that has changed since then.
Musk further explained that all changes to the platform are essentially trial and error.
“Please note that Twitter will be doing a lot of stupid things in the coming months.” he said. “We’ll keep what works and change what doesn’t.”
Now if users hover over the blue tick, a disclaimer appears that reads, “This account has been verified because it is visible in government, news, entertainment, or another specific category.”
Under the new guidelines, the blue check mark now means two different things.
“Either that an account has been verified according to the previous verification criteria (active, visible, and authentic), or that the account has an active subscription to Twitter news Twitter Blue subscription servicewhich became available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia New Zealand and the UK on November 9.”
The guidelines state that accounts that receive a blue tick as part of the subscription will not be subject to review to confirm that they meet the active, visible and authentic criteria that were used in the previous process.
“Please note, to minimize impersonation risks, display name changes will be temporarily limited to verified accounts,” the disclaimer reads. “This will affect Verified accounts under Twitter’s legacy program and new Twitter Blue subscription product.”
On Tuesday evening, Twitter VP Esther Crawford, who is leading the revamp Blue Twitter explained the short addition.
“Many people have asked how you will be able to tell the difference between them @TwitterBlue subscribers with blue ticks and accounts that have been verified as official, which is why we’re introducing the ‘Official’ label to select accounts when we launch,” she posted on Twitter.
She further explained how accounts qualify for the “official” marker and how it differs from that blue checkpoint.
“Not all previously verified accounts will receive the ‘Official’ tag, and the tag is not available for purchase,” said Crawford, who was recently the subject of a viral photo showing him sleeping on the floor of a Twitter office while working to meet Musk’s deadlines.
After the change, for a brief moment, official accounts like CIA, KTLA, New York Times, Coca-Cola, Appleand former president Barack Obama received the “official” mark.
The new marker came days after Musk announced he would start charging for accounts to be verified. Before Musk owned the company, the much-coveted blue tick on Twitter accounts was an indicator of authenticity.
These tokens will be available at a yet-to-be-announced date to anyone willing to pay a $7.99 per month subscription, which will also include some bonus features, such as fewer ads and the ability to ‘given tweets greater visibility than those coming from non-subscribers.
Meanwhile, experts have expressed concern that making the sign available to anyone for a fee could lead to imitations and the spread of misinformation and fraud. The gray label — a color that tends to blend into the background whether you’re using light or dark mode to scroll through Twitter — was an obvious compromise.
There are about 423,000 verified accounts under the outgoing system. Many of them belong to celebrities, businesses and politicians, as well as media outlets.
But a large proportion of verified accounts belong to individual journalists, some with small followings in local newspapers and news sites around the world. The idea was to verify journalists so their identities weren’t used to push fake news on Twitter.
Musk had previously presented defining official accounts in a different way than a blue check.
