• News

Twitter removes distinguishment between Legacy and Blue verified accounts

All verified accounts on Twitter now feature the same description, blurring the line between Blue and Legacy verified accounts.

Donovan Erskine

April 3, 2023 7:30 AM

Getty Images

4

One of Elon Musk’s longest-running gripes with Twitter was with verified accounts and the culture surrounding them. He often criticized verification as being a status symbol and vowed to overhaul the system once he was in control of the social media company. Since Twitter added the ability to buy a checkmark with Twitter Blue, it’s had a tooltip that shows by which means an account was verified. Now, Twitter has removed that feature, no longer distinguishing which accounts are Legacy verifications and which were verified by Twitter Blue.

For the past couple of weeks, Twitter had been warning Legacy verified users that their verification status would be removed on April 1, 2023. After much speculation about the logistics of the company actually removing verification from these users, it ended up not scrapping those checkmarks at all. Instead, both Legacy and Blue verified Twitter accounts now show the same text when you click on their checkmark. “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”

The change makes it impossible for users to tell which users were verified through Twitter Blue versus which ones were verified under Twitter’s original process, before the Musk takeover. Since verification became a purchasable perk, there had been much discourse surrounding those that have them. Previously, you could tap/click the checkmark on a user’s profile to see if they were verified through Blue or Legacy.

With the latest change to Twitter verification, it will be interesting to see if more issues stem from it. When Twitter first added verification to Twitter Blue, it created an impersonation problem as subscribers used the new feature to pose as celebrities and popular companies. As we watch to see how things are impacted by the new model, count on Shacknews for all your Twitter news.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a young journalist from Maryland, who likes to game. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge Scream nerd and film fanatic that will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_