Twitter’s VVIP gold verification badge will cost a grand a month and SMS 2FA no longer be available on free accounts

It’s been a while since Elon took over Twitter and made quite some radical changes but it certainly was not the last time he did so. In his latest attempts to make Twitter profitable, he has made some changes to verification.

Many Twitter users are definitely now familiar with the yellow checkmark, most prevalent on a number of business accounts. Well, Businesses will be required to pay a US$1000 monthly subscription to maintain this gold verification badge and if the business has sub-accounts, these will also be required to pay US$50 monthly subscriptions each. I know fortune 500 companies won’t even flinch at this but cash-strapped startups are going to have to settle for the blue one.

Thanks for your interest in Verified Organizations. We’re now opening the gates for early access to our Organization plan.
As an early access subscriber, you’ll get a gold checkmark for your organization and affiliation badges for its associates. Next week, we’ll onboard you to our administration portal and you’ll be eligible for Tweet Boosting, which will increase the reach and distribution for your organization and its affiliates whenever you tweet.
If you’d like to subscribe, Verified for Organizations is $1,000 per month, and $50 per additional affiliated handle per month with one month of free affiliations.
Let me know if you’re interested and I can get you set up with a payment link.

Twitter post

Twitter is reportedly emailing businesses offering gold check mark verification for $1000 PER MONTH!

And affiliate account verification for $50 each per month pic.twitter.com/hohTPKLKdi

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) February 3, 2023

The blue one is not safe either. In the age of hectic cybercrime where even our very own Minister of Finance got their Twitter account hacked, Elon decided to remove SMS-based 2-factor authentication. It’s now only available under the Twitter Blue subscription plan which was settled at US$8 per month. You can still use a security key or an authenticator app to set up 2FA.

While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors. So starting today, we will no longer allow accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers. The availability of text message 2FA for Twitter Blue may vary by country and carrier.

Twitter Blog

Also Read:

• The Twitter account of Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has been hacked
• An ‘Official’ badge for that US$8 Twitter subscription? [Updated]