How to Know If Someone Paid to Check on Twitter
Twitter is on fire right now. With Elon Musk as owner and CEO, the company has changed many of the rules and regulations that users (and advertisers) have come to expect from the platform. The latest drama, however, concerns Twitter verification, and this hinders the ability to tell which accounts are real and which are fake.
The blue tick on Twitter was more than just a status symbol. Twitter’s verification process served as a means of identification: if you saw a blue checkmark next to an account for, say, a politician, you knew that account was official and not a copycat. Accounts had to be verified to confirm their identity and value before they received a blue check, which is a good thing.
However, under Musk’s leadership, anyone can buy a blue check by following Twitter Blue for $8 a month. After the changes were made, identifying legitimate users became a problem. In fact, Twitter Blue followers have taken advantage of the prank system by impersonating accounts such as Nintendo of America, President Biden, and, of course, Elon Musk himself.
While Twitter HQ is no doubt looking for solutions to these problems, there’s a smaller issue that we all need to contend with: How do you know if an account is actually verified or if a user just bought their tick through Twitter Blue? Even if the account in question is not using this checkbox for some kind of false or nefarious use, it is still confusing and makes some accounts seem more important or official than they really are.
Built-in Twitter solution for identifying verified accounts
Initially, Twitter introduced a new white checkmark for verified accounts , which was located below the username (I think two checkmarks are better than one?). However, Musk almost immediately “killed” this plan . The site is up again.
Now the only built-in way to know if a Twitter account or a follower is verified is by clicking or tapping on the account itself. Once on this page, you can click or tap on the checkmark to see one of two messages:
- This account is verified as it is known in government, news, entertainment or other designated categories.
- This account is verified as following Twitter Blue.
The messages are pretty clear: if someone has actually been verified, you’ll see the first message, but if they only follow Twitter Blue, you’ll see the second. However, this solution is not good if you want to know the account verification status while scrolling the feed. Who wants to click on every account to check?
However, if you’re using Google Chrome, you can install the ” Eight Dollars ” extension to do things that Twitter won’t do. Once installed, it replaces the blue checkmark with one of two new icons: “Truly Verified” or “Paid for Verification”.
To get started, open Chrome, then type chrome://extensions in the URL bar and press Enter. Enable the developer mode switch, then download the extension from the Github link here . Now unzip the folder, click the Download Unpacked button in Chrome, and select a new folder. Make sure Eight Dollars is enabled on the Chrome Extensions page.
[ XDA Developers ]