➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Twitter verification

• 3️⃣ Three verification check marks will be arriving on Twitter next week

• 🪙 Blue ticks will distinguish verified users, gray will mark government accounts, while gold will be used for companies

• 📨 Musk revealed the new system in a Tweet, as per his usual mode of platform announcements

• ⛔ It’s hoped the system will go some way to curbing impersonators and trolls

Twitter’s verification system is set to return on Friday, December 2, and introduce not one authentication check mark, not two, but a grand total of three ticks to distinguish official users.

Elon Musk announced the service’s return in a tweet, saying the new verification process will be manually operated as a “painful, but necessary” safeguard against account impersonation. Blue ticks will be given to verified accounts of individuals, gray checks to government accounts, and gold to companies.

This is the first time Twitter will use different colored verification ticks to differentiate users. It follows Musk’s decision to offer verified check marks to all users for an $8 monthly fee without any kind of moderation or authentication system. When the system was rolled out last month, users quickly began impersonating public figures. The system was prematurely suspended after a second check mark was briefly introduced to distinguish official and paid-for verification.

Colored verification ticks is the latest strategy Musk has announced to clamp down on Twitter impersonators. Last week, the Twitter CEO announced that any account which is less than three months old won’t be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue. It’s hoped the new threshold will alleviate the number of scam and troll accounts that are created solely for the purpose of fraudulent behavior.

Musk also recently confirmed that previously suspended accounts will be allowed back onto the platform as early as next week. After conducting a poll on his personal Twitter account, he committed to granting a “general amnesty to suspended accounts”, although didn’t specify exactly which, or how many, users will be allowed to return.

He already reinstated Donald Trump following a previous contentious poll, but the former president has suggested he won’t be coming back to Twitter despite Musk’s invitation. Trump says he’ll be sticking to his own alternative social network, Truth Social, which was set up earlier this year.

Musk’s handling of banned accounts and user impersonation will be particularly important to advertisers, some of whose stock tanked after trolls created fake accounts last month. With Musk already worried about bankruptcy, and having laid off half the company’s workforce to supposedly cut costs, he’ll likely be hoping to court advertisers back the platform.