Twitter's grey verification tick for government officials goes live

Elon Musk's Twitter has rolled out a grey verification tick to identify government bodies. Through Twitter's new update, government organisations will now be identified through a grey tick visible beside the name of the handle. Authentic accounts of multilateral organisations will also be identified by the grey tick. 

The change is already showing on some accounts. Twitter accounts of offices of heads of state, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Russian President Vladimir Putin, have already received their grey ticks. 

Grey verification tick update on Twitter 

Twitter announced a new verification system in November this year. According to the social media giant's new verification system, companies will get gold ticks, governments grey and individuals blue. "All verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check activates," Twitter said in its announcement. 

"While talking about the new updates on the tick verification Musk said, Painful, but necessary." 

In another tweet, while replying to a follower's question, Musk wrote, " All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective. Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org." 

Elon Musk announced an $8 subscription service in exchange for a blue tick a few days taking over Twitter.

The new feature repelled advertisers as many users started hosting fake accounts with blue ticks. Fake accounts impersonating well-known personalities and brands mushroomed across the platform. 

Twitter halted the subscription service for some time and then returned with it with new markers to identify different types of organisations on the platform.