After all, Twitter’s new verification strategy will be a two-tiered system. Esther Crawford, the Twitter VP in charge of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription, confirmed that the company will use a separate “official” label for “select” accounts in addition to the blue checkmarks.
The label was previously discovered on internal Twitter builds, but this is the first time anyone at the company has confirmed its existence. Twitter, which recently laid off the majority of its communications staff, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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According to Crawford, the “official” label will be reserved for “government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures.”
It’s unclear how Twitter will designate which accounts qualify or if they will have to go through an additional vetting process. “Not all previously verified accounts will get the ‘Official’ label and the label is not available for purchase,” Crawford tweeted.
A lot of folks have asked about 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 “Official" label to select accounts when we launch. pic.twitter.com/0p2Ae5nWpO
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 8, 2022
The plan appears to be intended to address some of the criticism leveled at Musk’s plan for Twitter Blue and verification. Paying for verification, in particular, could allow scammers and impersonators to hijack conversations and spread misinformation.
Crawford isn’t the first Twitter executive to speak out about the problems. Twitter’s head of integrity, Yoel Roth, has also stated that the company plans to “increase proactive review of Blue Verified accounts that show signs of impersonating another user.”
Elon Musk also stated that Twitter would immediately ban all impersonators after a number of accounts changed their names to Elon Musk in order to make a point about his plans.
Long-term, I think we need to invest more in identity verification as a complement to proof-of-humanness. Paid Verification is a strong (not perfect) signal of humanness, which helps fight bots and spam. But that’s not the same thing as identity verification.
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 8, 2022
Of course, the new “official” labels sound a lot like… Twitter’s current verification system, which Musk and others have criticized as being unfair.
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Furthermore, the fact that it will only be given to “select” accounts determined by Twitter suggests that the company will once again make a judgment about which accounts are “notable,” which has been criticized by Twitter executives, including Roth.
Both the “official” label and the expanded verification are expected to be available in the coming days.
