How to spot if someone bought their blue checkmark

Twitter is rolling out a new feature that will help people distinguish between verified accounts and those who pay for Twitter Blue, again.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October, one of the first features he decided to implement was the ability for anyone to get verified.

Previously, only people with notoriety could get verified but with Twitter Blue users can pay $8 per month to receive the famous blue check mark.

While some celebrated, others expressed concern that people would not be able to distinguish impersonators from real people.

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So Musk and the Twitter team began experimenting with ideas.

First, they rolled out an "official" badge which added a tag to users' profiles indicating they were verified with a government ID. But Musk scrapped the idea hours later.

Now, they've added a pop-up that tells people whether the person was verified for notability or because they pay for Twitter Blue when clicking on a blue check mark.

For notable people, the message reads, "This account is verified because it's notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category."

For Twitter Blue subscribers the message reads, "This account is verified because it's subscribed to Twitter Blue."

When Musk decided to give everyone the option to add a verification badge to their profile, he said it was to get rid of the "lords and peasants system".

But people are finding the distinction between paid subscribers and notable users an extension of the same hierarchy system.

Musk addressed the changes saying Twitter plans to change the wording on the badge information to "Legacy Verified. Could be notable, but could also be bogus."

"In days to come, we’ll add granularity to verified badge, such as organizational affiliation & ID verification," Musk added.

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