Twitter to Offer “Amnesty” to Suspended Accounts Ahead of Verified Relaunch
Twitter is preparing to grant amnesty to suspended accounts starting next week. Twitter CEO Elon Musk made this decision after polling users on if the platform should offer a “general amnesty” to suspended accounts that “have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.”
With over 72 percent of the 3.1 million participants voting in favor of the amnesty, Elon Musk announced that the platform will start welcoming back suspended accounts next week. This will be the second time Elon Musk announces a big change regarding “free speech” issues on Twitter based on the results of a poll.
The people have spoken.
Amnesty begins next week.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022
Last week, the Twitter CEO also polled Twitter users on whether the platform should reinstate the account of former US President Donald Trump. After 51.8% of participants voted yes, Trump’s account has also been reinstated, but it remains unused as of this writing.
According to Musk, Twitter also plans to relaunch its Twitter Blue subscription on Friday next week, with a notable difference: This time, the company will start requiring manual authentication to provide a checkmark to subscribers. This is something the Twitter CEO said was “painful, but necessary”
Moreover, Musk said that Twitter will now offer additional colors for checkmarks to differentiate users from companies and governments. Going forward, the blue verified checkmark will be used for verified individuals (whether they’re famous or not), and Twitter will add a gold check for companies and a grey one for governments.
Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week.
Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.
Painful, but necessary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
“Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org,” Musk said in seperate tweet, adding that more details about Twitter’s Verified program will be shared next week. After Twitter previously rolled out an “Official” badge on select brand accounts, these different color checks may well make what used to be a pretty straightforward system much more complicated than before.
The new manual authentication process does seem to be a step in the right direction, however. The platform definitely needs a system to verify the identity of Blue subscribers, but this is likely going to be difficult to implement after Twitter laid off over 50% of its workforce this month.