Why it matters: 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.

Details: “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.

[They won’t pay for the institutional accounts either, it seems. And they also say they won’t participate in a pilot program at Twitter to provide verification for organizations. When spoof accounts begin proliferating, want to bet they’ll reconsider? — Ed]