People were upset, myself included, when Twitter said anyone who pays the $8 per month fee could get a blue checkmark saying the account is verified. But the problem is, the only thing you have to do is pay the $8, you don’t have to prove you are who you say you are or do anything other than pay $8, so all it does is prove I have $8.

This potentially opens the door for massive fraud.

But (for now, at least) there is a difference in the verified checkmark.

If you mouse over my verified checkmark, you will see that it says

But there is a 2nd kind of verification. If you mouse over a “real” verified account, it will say —

This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.

As with someone famous like Doja Cat or Porn Star Rachel Starr.

Now, if you click the “learn more” link, you get specific information that clearly says that there are, in fact, two different types of verification.

Now the blue checkmark may mean two different things: either that an account was verified under the previous verification criteria (active, notable, and authentic), or that the account has an active subscription to Twitter’s new Twitter Blue subscription service, which was made available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia New Zealand and the UK on November 9, 2022. Accounts that receive the blue checkmark as part of a Twitter Blue subscription will not undergo review to confirm that they meet the active, notable and authentic criteria that was used in the previous process.

It goes on to talk about other things, but the long and short of it is there are still two different types of verified accounts, those for people of notable interest and then for people like me who have $8.

So yes, I have the verified badge, but I’m not verified in the same way that a person of notable interest might be (aka a celeb or famous porn star).

Will this change? Maybe.

Maybe not.

At this point, nobody really knows.