Twitter will begin authenticating blue, gray, and gold accounts

Elon Musk said Twitter’s verification program could return on Friday, December 2, with a new identity verification process to address the problem of someone impersonating another person or company.

Musk described the new manual authentication process as “painful but necessary.” The ticks will also be colored — gold for companies, gray for government, and blue for individual accounts.

As it turns out, offering verified ticks for an $8 monthly subscription without actually verifying your identity wasn’t a very good idea. After Musk ignored warnings from Twitter’s trust and security officials, a paid subscription to Twitter Blue was launched and quickly led to some “verified” accounts impersonating well-known public figures and brands, driving advertisers away from the high-risk platforms. Musk has since said that the company will not relaunch Twitter Blue until “there’s high confidence that significant imitations will not occur.”

Musk previously said that Twitter “probably use different color check for organizations than individuals.”

“All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective,” Musk wrote on his Twitter. “Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org.”