A Chrome extension will soon help Twitter users identify Twitter accounts that were previously legacy verified, creator Oliver Alexander announced on Twitter shortly after legacy checkmarks disappeared on Thursday, April 20.
Alexander shares that the extension will be rolled out by Friday and that it would add a green checkmark on accounts that were previously legacy verified. Alexander, who describes himself as an analyst with a passion for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), explained that the extension uses publicly available data on the around 408,000 previously verified accounts.
“This will never replace the old system, but will provide those who want it a way of being able to ID these accounts,” he said. “Being able to verify certain accounts at a glance is a valuable tool to many.”
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The Perception Gap
A Princeton study on account verification on social media found that the use of the blue check and the term verification on Twitter, which they deem “misleading and harmful to consumers,” could be considered a deceptive business practice per the FTC Act and state consumer protection laws.
They found that most people don’t understand what these blue checks now mean — with many believing that they require “actual verification of a person’s identity, not just a working phone number and payment,” and that those subscribed to Twitter Blue are “disproportionately crypto bros, Elon stans, new, and conservative.”
To add to the confusion, Twitter owner Elon Musk has also started giving “complimentary” Twitter Blue subscriptions to (troll) celebrities who previously said that they will not be paying to keep their blue checks.
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