Twitter’s new gray ‘official’ checks are rolling out to some high-profile accounts

Several celebrity and publisher accounts now have a gray “official” checkmark — in addition to the blue verified badge. News outlets, including Reuters, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, are now double-badged, in addition to public figures, politicians, and other official brand accounts. Our @Verge handle is one of the accounts marked official, as of this writing, while Twitter’s reluctant new owner, Elon Musk, is not.

When Elon Musk announced that a Twitter Blue subscription would include a blue check for paying users, there were concerns about how people would distinguish between legitimate accounts and impersonations, which was the purpose of the blue check to begin with.

Twitter’s Esther Crawford said yesterday that the company would introduce a gray “official” label for verified real accounts. Not all blue check accounts have a gray badge yet, however, and it’s unclear whether all of them will add the tag.