Actually, everything was good: Anyone who had a blue tick next to their name on Twitter was a verified account. So a real celebrity, politician or company. A hook like that wasn't easy to get, which made it all the more valuable. But then Elon Musk came along and made the hook completely pointless with his tactic that you could soon buy it. But now there is a gray tick for previously verified users.
– UPDATE from November 9th, 2022: 6:44 p.m. –
Or not: “I just killed it,” says Elon Musk on Twitter to a user whose gray tick disappeared .
“Please note that Twitter will be doing a lot of stupid things in the coming months. What works will be kept, and what won’t.”
“There are no more sacred cows in Twitter’s product development,” tweets product boss Esther Crawford .
“Elon is willing to try a lot. Many things will fail, some things will be successful.” The goal is a successful mix of successful changes that ensure a healthy and high-growth business model in the long term.
-UPDATE END-
Blue becomes gray
Elon Musk received a lot of criticism for making the familiar blue tick available to everyone: For $7.99 a month you can buy some benefits in the future, such as less advertising and preferred display in the answers, and on top of that the blue tick now actually only has the benefit of showing everyone that you are paying Musk money.
A gray tick is now being rolled out, which can be seen in the profile and under the name of some users who have already been verified by Twitter in the past. At this point in time, they are essentially verified twice until the blue checkmark disappears if they do not want to pay the fee for it.
a surprising gray problem for herself :
Some news agencies , newspapers and some artists have the gray tick:

Other well-known accounts, such as those of the Human Rights Watch or the Federal Office for Migration , and even the in-house Twitter Verified account , are (still) missing the gray tick - or perhaps don't have it at all.
Not all blue people get gray
As Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted, not all verified accounts with a blue checkmark will also get a gray checkmark:
Not all previously verified accounts will get the “Official” label and the label is not available for purchase. Accounts that will receive it include government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures.
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 8, 2022
According to Crawford, “ government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures ” will get the gray tick – if you still have a blue tick, you shouldn’t get excited too early.
Conclusion
Twitter has essentially solved a problem that it created itself with an ill-fitting plaster: the problem that it is no longer clear which accounts are real. Some Blue Hook owners jokingly renamed themselves “Elon Musk” and were then promptly banned from the platform - Elon Musk apparently only understands jokes that he makes and are not directed at him.
It is still completely unclear whether a gray tick can be applied for in the future, especially since Musk has already significantly thinned out the workforce.
Also interesting: Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, there has been a lot of talk about what will change at the microblogging service regarding freedom of speech and censorship.
– Did a Tagesschau correspondent really compare Twitter users to rats?
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