Twitter continues to generate news, and while most of it doesn’t look good for the social network, who knows if the whole mess of dimes and directors we keep repeating in the press isn’t part of Elon Musk’s strategy to keep the news in the spotlight. a conversation about the platform. Although, on the other hand, it was predictable: like 44,000 million was not spent to keep everything as it was.

As for the verified ones, the symbol that accompanies many users with many followers and which theoretically gives them a generally higher status because they are more or less relevant personalities; a symbol that has sparked so much debate in recent days due to the plans revealed by Musk around it… Everything seems to be coming to fruition, or predestined to do so.

Wrapping up the story, Musk suggested that the symbol was a sort of stamp of class that only certain users had access to… and the truth is, it’s been that way for a long time. Without further ado, Twitter paralyzed the provision of verifications for a long time due to the amount of people requesting them and the problems of properly allocating them, i.e. verifying that one of these tokens is actually owned by the person who claims to be.

The verifications were so valued that, as Musk acknowledged, they were Twitter employees selling them themselveswhile refusing to provide them to certain types of users, such as those with a relevant profile related to the American political right.

Yeah

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022

In total, Musk promised to make a clean slate and make the verified ones available to all users who are willing pay $8 a montha subscription that has come to be called Twitter Blue and which has additional benefits, such as the “premium” mode of the service: the ability to publish longer audio and video, priority in replies, mentions and searches, and the display of half of the advertising stream.

In other words, Musk’s idea was to convert verified users into Twitter’s premium mode, which he didn’t like because being verified makes sense and because many users who are verified well-known personalities in their field that they will not pay because they are recognized for what they already are. There has also been concern that verified profiles pretending to be someone they are not will start swarming the platform.

The matter is complicated because there are many verified users on Twitter who hide behind a pseudonym – that is, they are not “real” nobody – and from what was said, the purpose of this new verification proposed by Musk was with the sole purpose of making cash and devalue the model for those who pay the $8 monthly subscription, even though other benefits are included.

But in the end it looks like that won’t be the case, common sense will prevail and one thing will be Twitter Blue with its verification symbols that actually mean they are a premium user and traditional verified ones will be preserved, or at least their variation for public figures who require it.

The new Twitter Blue doesn’t include ID verification – it’s an optional, paid subscription that offers a blue tick and access to select features. We will continue to experiment with ways to differentiate between account types.

— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 8, 2022

And the question was not so difficult: to give a verification symbol to those who deserve it due to their public relevance, and to verify that they are who they say they are, whether it is a person or an organization. And then Twitter Blue for those who want it, with the ability to verify, but only as an add-on. We’ll have to see how they do it, but that’s the idea for now.

However, it is noted that not all currently verified accounts will remain verifiedand while people or organizations susceptible to impersonation are expected to do so, it remains to be seen where Twitter will put the barrier, whether in the number of followers, the nature of the account, or other data taken into account.