- Twitter began its roll out of its Twitter Blue blue check verification this week.
- It offers users the chance to pay $8 a month for a blue check verification
- A new Chrome extension uncovers which accounts are genuinely verified and which paid to play.
A new Chrome extension allows you to immediately see which Twitter users have paid for a blue verification checkmark and which were verified prior to the launch of Elon Musk’s version of Twitter Blue.
Visually, previously verified accounts and those who have purchased Musk’s new $8-a-month Twitter Blue verified check mark look exactly the same. It’s only when you go to the user page and click on the blue checkmark that one of two messages will pop up:
The Eight Dollars extension allows users to shortcut the process and see on their Twitter feed which accounts have paid for verification and which have not. Accounts display as “actually verified” or “paid for verification.”
The extension saves users the step of having to go to a profile page to check the status of an account.
The verification status also displays on the user’s profile page.
Twitter began rolling out Musk’s controversial Twitter Blue initiative on Tuesday, charging aspiring blue-checkers $8 a month for the mark and offering a variety of other perks for the price.
Earlier this month, Musk railed against Twitter’s previous verified account system, calling it a “lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.”
Musk has said that his Twitter Blue “will democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people,” but also acknowledged a financial incentive for the push, noting that it would “give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators.”
But since its launch on Tuesday, there’s already been widespread misinformation across the site (in one case, a fake LeBron James panicked Lakers fans when he requested a trade to the Cleveland Cavaliers), and Musk himself admitted in a Twitter town hall on Wednesday that it might be “a dumb decision, but we’ll see.”