If you haven't already noticed, Twitter is a bit on fire right now, and not in a good way. Despite claims from new owner Elon Musk that the €8/month verification model will reduce the amount of spam on the platform, that seems far from the case, with several users proving it's easier than ever. impersonate a brand or individual. Fortunately, some third-party developers have arrived to help fix Twitter issues, and you can use their tool right away.
the TL; DR for One of Twitter's many problems right now is that there are two types of verification, but it's not immediately clear which type of account it is. There's a classic verification, where Twitter actually verifies who you say you are, and a new type of Twitter Blue followers (which costs €/€/AU€8 per month) that gives you a nearly identical check mark with no actual verification ( i.e. it's basically a useless sticker now).
The only way to find out what type of account is to go to your profile and click the check mark next to your name. C'est plus complicé que beaucoup de gens ne sont prêts à le faire et nous avons déjà vu des tweets viraux viraux à partir de faux comptes pour Nintendo of America, l'ancien président américain George W. Bush et la star du basketball LeBron James , Among others ; with many people believing that these fakers were the real deal. Who could have predicted that this would happen? Well, everyone except Elon Musk, it seems.
That's where the new Eight-Dollars browser extension (opens in a new tab) comes into play. The free tool, created by developers Wseager, Waltzaround and Noway, can change the way Twitter looks on your computer's browser and will reveal whether people are actually verified or just paying for it.
People who have been verified the traditional way have a classic-looking check mark and the words "Currently Verified" next to their username. Meanwhile, people who are only verified because of their Twitter Blue subscription have a dollar sign instead of a check and the words "Paid for verification" next to their name. People who have original, blue verification (such as steamboat and event organizer Ludwig Ahrgren (opens in a new tab)) receive effective verification status at the time of writing.
Even better, this extension shows you what type of verification a person has on each tweet they post (you don't have to click anything) so you can instantly determine if an account is actually or potentially fake.
The solution, however, is not perfect. For one, not all accounts that have paid for verification are fake. Some people use Blue for their other functions, like editing tweets and not causing chaos online. On the other hand, this solution is only available in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge browsers. If you exclusively browse Twitter on your phone, you're out of luck.
Finally, this extension requires you to manually install it via GitHub (opens in a new tab). With that said, we found the setup process to be super simple. We got it up and running in less than a minute using the Chrome instructions on the GitHub page.
Twitter came up with its own solution to its verification problem, namely an "official" bonus tag that appears on tweets from official accounts, but its introduction was (unsurprisingly) messy. At first all properly verified accounts were labeled Official, then none, and now some branded accounts are, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why accounts are labeled Official. For example, the Japanese and European Nintendo accounts are, but as of this writing, Nintendo of America is not official.
Given the number of U-turns Elon Musk has done since taking over Twitter, there's no guarantee Official will stick around. So for now, we recommend downloading Eight-Dollars if he wants to feel a little more secure when Doom is scrolling through the latest social media dumpster on the internet.
Or, if you've had enough of Twitter, why not check out our guides for the best Twitter alternatives and how to delete a Twitter account?