The White House will not pay to have its staff’s official Twitter profiles continue to be verified, according to guidance issued to staffers via an email obtained by Axios.
Official White House staffers rely on their verified accounts to inform the public on behalf of the administration. Verification, combined with the designated Twitter profiles, helped to ensure the public could trust those messages.
“It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service. Thus, a blue check mark will now simply serve as a verification that the account is a paid user,” White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty told staffers in an email sent Friday afternoon.
Under the current scheme, official government accounts carry a gray check mark, media outlets and companies get gold ones and suckers get to show a blue one, perhaps optionally.
I expect mine will go away very soon.