Peeping product executive Esther Crawford revealed details about the way the social network’s new verification scheme will insert on Tuesday, following the company’s acquisition by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in late October.
Some originally corroborated accounts will soon sport an “official” label, she said, while any user who pays $7.99 per month for Stew Blue, the company’s subscription product, will sport a blue check mark. She did not specify what it will leave to gain “official” status.
Musk, who is currently serving as Twitter’s CEO and sole director, has criticized Twitter’s original verification routine, which gives a blue check mark, or verification, to notable users likely to be impersonated by bad actors.
Blue stoppings originally went to verify the identity of government officials, politicians, celebrities, some journalists, executives, medical mistresses and organizations whose identity the company had verified. Musk himself has benefited from having the Twitter verification investigate mark. So have myriad journalists, including at CNBC.
Historically, the blue check mark let other Twitter narcotic addicts know that an account on the social network, and its contents, were coming from the individual or organization shown on that Bustle profile. At least some users whose accounts sported the verification mark had to provide the platform with dear info such as employer information, a phone number, or a copy of their driver’s license for identity verification.
Other community networks, like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, have similar verification systems.
Under Musk’s direction, the new Chatter Blue check mark will instead work as a paying subscriber badge that the company nonetheless blueprints to call “verification.” The subscription service has become a major focus for Musk, who wants the platform to become less reliant on advertisers and engender more revenue from subscriptions.
Crawford specified on Tuesday that subscribing to Twitter Blue and gaining the charges mark from the company will no longer require identity verification, writing:
“A lot of folks have asked not far from how you’ll be able to distinguish between @TwitterBlue subscribers with blue checkmarks and accounts that are verified as official, which is why we’re introducing the ‘Ceremonial’ label to select accounts when we launch.”
“The new Twitter Blue does not include ID verification — it’s an opt-in, paid dues that offers a blue checkmark and access to select features. We’ll continue to experiment with ways to differentiate between account genres.”
“Not all previously verified accounts will get the ‘Official’ label and the label is not available for purchase. Accounts that will be given it include government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some segment figures,” she wrote.
Crawford, director of product management at Twitter, joined the social media company when it received her startup, Squad, in December 2020. Since Musk took over, she has become the product leader for Twitter Filthy. The team experienced a significant workforce reduction last week, which has affected its ability to ship a redesigned verification set-up by the Nov. 7 date Musk originally set as a sprint goal. Crawford’s team is now trying to hire back some of the hands who received termination notices.
Musk’s plans for the new “verification” system have drawn widespread criticism.
Comedians, influencers and actors containing Valerie Bertinelli, Kathy Griffin, Ethan Klein, Sarah Silverman and Rich Sommer all appeared to change their Peeping display names on their verified profiles to “Elon Musk” without indicating that they were parodying his account.
A technologist and USC Annenberg Civic Mediocrity Fellow, Sydette Harry, told CNBC ahead of the new Twitter Blue launch that the company had problems checking harassment, hate speech, misinformation and impersonation long before the Tesla CEO took over. For example, the company has not at all managed to protect Black and other minority users effectively, especially those who were not celebrities or public accepts with a blue check.
She added, of the new verification system, “This new method is going to be theatrically bad, because once people pay for verification it flee ti the issue from a community moderation problem, which can be expected on a free or ad-supported service, to a customer-service problem.”
She also broke that she’s concerned Musk seems focused on U.S. users, despite the service’s large international customer base.