Twitter now has two verification systems; Twitter Blue and Officially Verified Accounts. But only one of them is actually for verified legitimate accounts. Twitter Blue subscribers have the blue checkmark next to their accounts, but aren't necessarily verified by ID. Whereas genuine brands have an Official badge to help identify them.

To help with identification, a developer from New Zealand created a browser extension called Eight Dollars to differentiate between Twitter Blue users and legitimate verified accounts. Here's how you can use it to tell verified users apart.

What Is the Eight Dollars Extension and Why Do You Need It?

Twitter has undergone major changes since Elon Musk took charge. For one, an increasing number of users are left confused by a couple of issues plaguing the social media platform. The most notable of these changes is giving a blue checkmark to all accounts that pay for the newly introduced Twitter Blue monthly subscription.

This new development classifies verified Twitter users into two groups. The first group consists of accounts officially verified for being reputable or popular figures in government, news, entertainment, sports, or any other designated category. Accounts subscribed to Twitter Blue make up the second group.

In a hope to combat impersonators, Twitter introduced one way to tell whether an account is verified for its notability or its $8 payment. You can open the account’s profile and click the checkmark to see more details. It'll explain if the user is Legacy Verified (under the old system) or verified via Twitter Blue.

However, clicking on account profiles to confirm this ruins the fluid user experience that Twitter is known for. Consequently, a Twitter user and software developer created the aptly-named Eight Dollars extension to differentiate between verified accounts and Twitter Blue users.

The difference between Twitter Blue users and Officially Verified Accounts

Eight Dollars seeks and replaces checkmarks on web Twitter with an indicator labeled Verified for official accounts or Paid for Twitter Blue subscribers.

This allows you to easily determine which accounts are actually verified without interrupting your user experience in any way. With this, Eight Dollars joins the list of useful Twitter extensions available on Google Chrome, Firefox, and other Chromium-based browsers.

How to Install the Eight Dollars Extension on Microsoft Edge

First, open your Edge browser and type edge://extensions in the search bar. Alternatively, click the ellipsis (...) symbol in the top-right of the browser and select Extensions from the pop-up menu that appears.

Accessing the extensions sub menu on Edge

Next, you must enable developer mode on Edge before you can install the Eight Dollars extension. To enable this, simply toggle on the Developer mode button on the left-hand side of the Extensions menu.

Enabling developer mode on Microsoft Edge

After enabling developer mode, you can download the Eight Dollars extension from GitHub. Once it's downloaded, you need to extract the ZIP file into a folder of your choice. Next, go back to edge://extensions, click Load unpacked, and select the Eight Dollars folder from your computer.

edge settings page to load package folder and select downloaded folder

Following these steps, the Eight Dollars extension should be successfully installed on your Edge browser. Installing this extension on Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox involves largely the same steps.

To use Eight Dollars, open the Extensions menu on Edge and check that the extension is enabled. This is also the same on Chrome, Firefox, Brave, or other Chromium-based browsers.

Eight Dollars Makes It Easier to Tell Who's Verified on Twitter

If you want to easily tell who's actually verified on Twitter, you can easily download and activate the Eight Dollars extension. It does need to be installed manually using the browser's developer mode, but is well worth the effort. But with these changes to Twitter verification, there's an argument to whether it actually matters any more.