Pretty much everyone can agree that Twitter is on its last legs. The social media network is dying a quick and pretty pitiful death, which is perhaps why its new owner feels like he can try out his worst ideas without doing much more damage. Elon Musk’s latest change for the platform is the announcement of multicolor Twitter verification ticks to differentiate between account types.
Distinguishing between companies, governments, & individuals makes sense, but we still need a way to tell the difference (at a glance) between public figures and the multitude of individuals who have (or choose to use) the exact same name on Twitter. Otherwise confusion results.
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) November 25, 2022
- Elon Musk has been trying to change the way Twitter verification works since he bought the site. At first, he launched a pay-to-play system in which users could subscribe to an $8/month fee for their own blue tick. That obviously went very wrong and was taken down within days of launch. This new plan is his latest attempt to rejig the system.
- So, how will it work? According to Musk, the new system will “tentatively” launch on Friday, December 2. “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. Painful, but necessary,” he wrote on Twitter.
- Not everyone is sold on this idea either. Michael Saylor, Founder & Executive Chairman of Micro Strategy, doesn’t think Musk’s plan goes far enough to avoid “confusion,” i.e. the possibility of people impersonating public figures and companies. “Distinguishing between companies, governments, & individuals makes sense, but we still need a way to tell the difference (at a glance) between public figures and the multitude of individuals who have (or choose to use) the exact same name on Twitter. Otherwise confusion results,” Saylor wrote. While Musk insists that doing so will “result in account suspension,” that’s what he said before.
- Can Twitter just shut down now and get it over with? It’s clear that’s where the platform is headed. Musk fired half the workforce, another quarter quit, and the app itself is overrun with bigots, insurrectionists, and trolls. It can’t continue on the way it has been. Twitter’s days are over. Let’s just call it a day, right? Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening. For now, we’ve got Elon Musk and his new multicolor Twitter verification ticks to deal with.
