X Premium subscribers can now verify their identity with a government-issued ID to get a special badge on their profile.
Image Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/15/x-launches-account-verification-based-on-government-id/
To verify your ID on X, you will need to upload a photo of your government ID and take a selfie. X has partnered with the company au10tix to provide this service. au10tix will keep your biometric data for 30 days, and X will keep it indefinitely for safety and security purposes. Verifying your ID is optional and does not give you any additional features.
While X has a verification tick, it’s not actually verifying anything, as you only need a phone number and a bank account to get one. There are no additional benefits to verifying your ID, but X has said that may change in the future.
X may use ID verification to age-gate content in the future, which would be a good step but could hurt its usage stats. X also says that verified users may receive additional benefits, such as faster checkmark approval and the ability to change profile details without losing verification.
It seems like X is building towards a bigger goal with ID verification. Ideally, ID confirmation would be built into X’s verification system so that the blue tick actually means something, like that the account holder is a real person. This would also be more in line with X’s mission to eliminate bots.
However, X’s new Premium offering has eroded the meaning of the blue tick, as it can now be purchased by anyone. This means that the blue tick is no longer a reliable indicator of an account’s authenticity.
