Twitter to relaunch blue-check service next Friday, says Elon Musk

Twitter will roll out verified gold and grey check marks as it relaunches the coveted blue-check service next Friday, chief executive Elon Musk said in a tweet, after holding off the roll-out earlier this week.

“Gold check for companies, grey check for governments, blue for individuals (celebrities or not). Painful, but necessary,” said Mr Musk in a tweet.

All verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check is activated, he added. “Individuals can have a secondary tiny logo to show they belong to an organisation if verified as such by that organisation,” he said, adding that he will give a longer explanation next week.

The company had paused its recently announced $8 blue-check subscription service as fake accounts mushroomed and had said the sought-after blue-check subscription service will be relaunched on November 29th.

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The blue-check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures.

The announcement comes a day after Mr Musk announced a general amnesty for suspended Twitter accounts in a move that brought a warning that “superspreaders of hate” will return to the social media platform.

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Twitter’s new owner said an amnesty for blocked users would begin next week after a majority of votes in a poll on his account backed the move. Accounts suspended on Twitter include Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, right-wing UK commentator Katie Hopkins and David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

Mr Musk had put out a poll on Wednesday asking if a general amnesty should be offered to accounts provided they have not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”. He did not specify which laws he meant. More than 3.1 million votes were recorded by the poll, with 72 per cent in favour of an amnesty.

Announcing the result, Mr Musk tweeted: “The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week.” He added “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people [is] the voice of God”.

It comes days after he reinstated Mr Trump’s account as well as the accounts for Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate — whose extreme misogynistic views led to a Twitter ban in 2017 — and the unlocking of the account for US rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, who was sanctioned last month for posting antisemitic comments.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a campaign group, said “superspreaders” of hateful content would benefit from the move and urged advertisers, many of whom have already paused spending on the platform, to stop funding Twitter.

Mr Musk had previously said there would be no account reinstatements until a newly announced content moderation council had met. However, the Tesla chief executive then said human rights groups “broke the deal” by urging advertisers to halt spending on the platform. — Reuters/Guardian