Twitter owner Elon Musk promised to end the old blue-checkered badge that was handed out to media and government figures, but his plans have been delayed. Instead, Twitter stopped distinguishing between those who pay for Twitter Blue and those who have a verified old badge. But there’s an iOS shortcut that lets you know whether or not the person behind a Twitter account is paying the blue badge.
Checkmate Shortcut Shows Who’s Verified and Who’s Paying for Twitter Blue
Instead of removing the verified badge from people who don’t pay for Twitter Blue, the company updated its app and website to make this information ambiguous. Previously, Twitter displayed the message “This is an old verified account. This may or may not be notable. But now it shows that the account is “verified because he is a Twitter Blue follower or is an old verified account”.
Twitter’s Verified Badge was created to confirm the identity and authenticity of specific accounts, such as journalists, politicians, artists, businesses, and institutions. This way, users could know that they were interacting with an official account. But with Twitter Blue, anyone paying for the subscription can get the same badge.
If you still want to know if a verified Twitter account is actually genuine or just paying for Twitter Blue, there is a way. Mike Beasley created the “Checkmate” shortcut to allow iOS users to identify whether the Blue Seal of a specific account is legitimate or Twitter Blue.
“With all the terrible changes on Twitter lately, it’s getting hard to tell who is or isn’t truly remarkable,” Beasley says. “Checkmate allows you to see through that nonsense and find out exactly how someone was verified,” he adds.
All you have to do is add the Checkmate shortcut to your device, then open Twitter, choose an account you want to check, and share it with the Checkmate shortcut. Within seconds, it will show whether the verified badge for that account is Legacy or Twitter Blue. It can even show if an account has been legitimately verified in the past and is now a Blue subscriber.
Musk wants everyone to pay for a blue badge
On Sunday, Elon Musk said on Twitter that he would give non-paying users “a few weeks grace” before removing their verified badges. The reason for this would be that removing verified badges would require a lot of manual work, which doesn’t seem ideal since Twitter has laid off many of its employees. Musk later deleted the tweet.
It should be noted that Musk also announced that Twitter will stop recommending tweets from non-Blue users. These users should also be prevented from voting in polls in the future.
According to Musk, the original verification system was misleading and unfair. But in reality, Twitter Blue lets everyone pretend to have a legitimate account without any identity verification. Now, it’s unclear how long “legacy” verified accounts will retain their blue badge.
H/T: Matt Navarre
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