(CNN) – Twitter said Tuesday night that to resolve the ambiguity as to which accounts on its platform have been identity verified, as opposed to those who simply pay $ 8 a month for a blue check mark on their profiles, the company will introduce a new. gray tick as part of an “official label”.
A screenshot posted by Esther Crawford, the company’s director of product management, showed what the new label would look like. The screenshot showed the Twitter account profile, which included the standard blue check mark next to her name, as well as a gray check mark and the word “Officer” under the account handle.
A visit to Twitter’s currently live profile didn’t show the gray check mark, suggesting that the feature hasn’t been implemented yet.
“Not all pre-verified accounts will earn the ‘Official’ tag and the tag is not available for purchase,” Crawford tweeted. “Accounts that will receive it include government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media, publishers and some public figures.”
Crawford also confirmed that the upcoming option to pay for a blue tick will not include an identity verification requirement.
“We will continue to experiment with ways to differentiate account types,” Crawford said.
In recent days, Twitter has received widespread criticism for its plan to change the meaning of the blue tick from not identifying confirmed people, especially public figures, to a new meaning indicating that a user has paid for Twitter Blue, the service. by subscription of the company.
Election security experts have warned that some are likely to pay for a blue tick and then change their names to impersonate government officials or other authorized sources of information.
After the feature appeared to be ready for launch over the weekend, Twitter decided to delay the launch until after the interim deadlines, CNN previously reported. Also, over the weekend, new Twitter owner Elon Musk promised that accounts caught in undisclosed phishing activities would be permanently banned without warning, nullifying previous promises that so-called permanent “permabans” would be extremely rare.
Musk’s announcement came after numerous celebrity accounts used his verified status to mock Musk’s pay verification scheme, modifying their accounts to resemble his own.
