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Twitter to Begin Culling Legacy Verified Marks From April 1

Next week, Twitter will start removing the legacy verified marks from user profiles. The company is moving towards a system where only paid subscribers and people who are part of approved organizations have that status.

Since November 2022, Twitter Blue members may also show the blue “verified” checkmark on their profiles. “Legacy verified” accounts on Twitter are those that had already been verified under the prior system. Twitter announced in a tweet on Thursday that the move to eliminate legacy verification will start on April 1.

Twitter
Image Source: japantimes.co.jp

According to the website, on April 1st, it “will start winding down [its] legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks.” It was always clear that the company wanted to do this.

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Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, stated that “far too many corrupt legacy Blue’verification’ checkmarks exist” and that the business is going to eliminate them in the upcoming months shortly after Twitter Blue was first introduced in November 2022.

The blue verification mark has become a key component of Twitter’s Twitter Blue subscription service, which Musk initially priced at $8 per month and now touts as the best method to use and advance the service. More paying subscribers, according to Musk, would also help to fix Twitter’s bot issue. According to the company, paying Blue users receive greater priority in searches and replies, which helps combat spam and scams. Additionally, they can edit tweets and get receive much fewer ads.

Just as Twitter Blue subscriptions went global, Twitter made a statement regarding legacy verified users. With this rollout, the service will be available to more people than it was previously. Paying subscribers will also receive a blue tick, have access to 4,000-character tweets, be able to edit their tweets, and benefit from better reply rankings.

If the company wants to reach Musk’s objective of having half of its income come from subscriptions, it must increase the availability of Blue. We’ll just have to see whether or not there are enough customers ready to pay the $8 monthly fee (or $11 if they pay via the iOS app) for its benefits.

Numerous journalists and public personalities are among those designated as verified without the Twitter Blue subscription. During the years that Twitter operated without Musk, this blue tick system assisted in establishing the veracity of assertions and reports emanating from those profiles and elevated Twitter to the status of a reliable news source.

Also Read: Trump returns to YouTube and Facebook after a two-year ban

Musk’s hatred for the old system has frequently been expressed in light of his contempt for journalists, who have frequently been the busiest verified users on Twitter. After largely ignoring journalist inquiries in previous months, Musk this month set the press@twitter.com email account to automatically reply with a poop emoji.

age verification tools

Instagram starts testing its age verification tools in more countries

Meta revealed that it had begun trying its Instagram age-verification tools in additional nations, including Mexico and Canada. In June of last year, the social networking app started experimenting with three new ways for people to verify their age: uploading their ID, making a video selfie, or requesting friends who know them to do so.

age verification tools
Image Source: news.yahoo.com

Instagram would ask a user to verify their age with one of the three ways if they tried to change their birth date from under 18 to 18 or older.

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The test was first made available in the USA, and in October it was also made available in Brazil and Japan. Currently, more nations in Europe, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Australia, and Japan are testing the age verification tools. In the upcoming months, Meta intends to make the tools accessible on a worldwide scale.

You can present an ID, such as a passport or a driver’s licence, to prove your identity. In this case, Instagram will keep your ID on its systems for 30 days before deleting it. You can use the video selfie approach if you do not have a valid ID. For this choice, Instagram has teamed up with London-based digital identification start-up Yoti.

Once you submit a video selfie, Yoti receives it and uses specially trained AI to confirm your age. Both businesses erase the data after the verification procedure is finished. The third method of age verification is known as “social vouching,” and it entails asking mutual followers to attest to your age.

The individual providing the vouch must be at least 18 years old and cannot be providing a vouch at the same time for another person. You will be asked to confirm your age, and the three individuals you choose to vouch for you will have three days to do so.

The people who are vouching for you will have the option to indicate your age range, such as under 13, 13–17, 18–20, 21, or older, or I’m not sure. Your age verification will only be accepted if all three of them select the same choice.

According to Meta, since it began trying age verification on Instagram last year, its evaluations have shown that it was able to thwart 96% of the teenagers who tried to change their birthdays on Instagram from under 18 to 18 or over. In an effort to prevent users under the age of 13 from signing up for the app, Instagram began requesting new users to enter their birthdates in 2019.

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The social media platform made submitting one’s birthdate a requirement starting in 2021. The same year, it introduced teen-friendly restrictions like the ability to ban DMs from unauthorized adults and make profiles private by default for individuals under the age of 16.

meta

Meta Launches Subscription Service for Facebook and Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg made the Announcement on Instagram Sunday that Meta is planning to test a monthly subscription service that will enable Facebook and Instagram users to pay to become verified.

Meta Verified” will start at $11.99 a month on the web or $14.99 a month on iOS, and the company will begin releasing it in Australia and New Zealand this week and “more countries soon.”

Source: cnn.com
Meta
Image Source: gulfbusiness.com

Other benefits include extra protection against fake accounts and direct contact with customer support services.

Users who wish to obtain the blue badge would be required to submit a govt ID that resembles their profile name and photograph to prevent fraudulent identities. Consumers must also be over the age of eighteen to be qualified.

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This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuckerberg wrote in an Instagram broadcast channel.

In a statement, Meta clarified there will be no changes to accounts that are already verified. Verification was previously for users who are “authentic and notable.”

We are evolving the meaning of the blue badge to focus on authenticity so we can expand verification access to more people,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We will display follower count in more places so people can distinguish which accounts are notable public figures among accounts that share the same name.”

Source: cnn.com

Meta also gets added to the list with other platforms with subscription-based systems, such as Discord, YouTube, and Reddit.

The firm recently disclosed that Fb’s daily active users had reached two billion; even so, with price level consuming into marketers’ budgets as well as intense competition from applications like TikTok, those users really aren’t helping to bring in nearly as many earnings as they used to.

Meta revealed in November that it planned for about 11,000 employees job cuts, or 13 % of its working population, the biggest layoff in the corporate history.

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Because of service fees obtained by Apple on the iPhone as well as Google on mobile phones running its Android operating system, Meta Verified would be lower in price on the internet than on mobile apps.

The firm confirmed that it doesn’t anticipate the facility to generate passive income during the testing phase, but added that it is an aspect of its expansion activities.

Twitter Blue

Twitter Blue to charge $20 Per Month for Blue Tick

Elon Musk has instructed Twitter employees to start charging more for Twitter Blue, which is the firm’s optional 4.99 USD per month subscription that provides some additional features for authenticated users. Musk has directed that the new Twitter Blue subscription, which also offers verified customers with a blue tick on the social networking platforms, cost approximately 19.99 USD, according to The Verge. The news comes as the “Chief Twit” presses to increase subscription revenue from the microblogging site.

Twitter Blue
Image Source: businesstoday.in

Furthermore, verified consumers will have 90 days to sign up or subscribe to the new plan or their blue checkmark would be removed. Besides that, On Sunday, Twitter staff members who were working on that project were told that they would be fired if the feature was not launched by November 7, according to The Verge.

On Sunday, Elon Musk tweeted, “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.” At present, Twitter Blue is operational in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Source: yourstory.com

Elon Musk dismissed some of Twitter’s top executives last week, after acquiring the social media company for 44 billion USD. These top executives included CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, legal executive Vijaya Gadde and General Counsel Sean Edgett.

According to The New York Times, Musk has “planned to begin laying off workers” at Twitter as soon as on Saturday. Citing people with knowledge of the situation, the report said that some managers were asked to “draw up lists of employees to cut.”

Source: yourstory.com

Along with plans to bring back banned accounts, including that of former United States President, Donald Trump, Elon Musk hosted a poll on Monday to reinstate Vine.

Musk has acted fast to implement changes at Twitter, beginning with changing the homepage for logged-out users. He’s also planning mass layoffs of intermediate managers and developers who haven’t recently made a significant contribution to the code base with the help of Tesla technicians he’s brought in as advisors at Twitter.

Managers are already curating lists of employees to lay off, and the cuts are anticipated to begin this week. Employees tasked with carrying out Musk’s projects since his takeover Thursday evening have been operating late into the night and throughout the weekend.

The Twitter Blue Tick subscription became widely available almost a year ago as a way to see ad-free articles from selected publishers and make other changes to the app, such as changing the colour of the home screen icon.

Advertising stayed the large majority of Twitter’s revenue in the few quarters following its initial public offering. Elon Musk wants account subscriptions for half of the company’s whole revenue.