Twitter launched the gray label "official"but hours later Elon Musk changed his mind

() — A new verification mark aimed at better identifying prominent accounts on Twitter has become the latest chapter in the general chaos that reigns in the company under the command of its new owner, Elon Musk.

Just hours after the feature’s debut, Musk abruptly announced Wednesday that he had “killed” the new gray verification badge designed to tag government accounts, major brands and media outlets, adding to the turmoil at one of the most influential social media companies in the world.

The new badge, which consisted of a gray check mark and the word “Official” placed below account identifiers belonging to Twitter, the United Nations and media outlets including , was first rolled out on the night of this Tuesday.

The feature was created to differentiate identity-verified “select” accounts from the blue checkmarks that Twitter has said it will soon charge $8 a month for, Esther Crawford, the company’s director of product management, tweeted.

The new badge appeared early Wednesday morning. But by the end of the morning, users began to notice that the badge had disappeared.

“I just got rid” (of the label), Musk tweeted in response to a tweet about the abrupt disappearances. “Keep in mind that Twitter will do a lot of dumb things in the coming months. We’ll keep what works and change what doesn’t,” he added.

Minutes later, however, Crawford was forced to clarify what Musk was referring to.

“The ‘official’ tag is still around as part of the @TwitterBlue launch — we’ll only be targeting government and commercial entities initially,” Crawford tweeted. “What he brought up was the fact that we’re not going to focus on giving people the ‘Official’ label at this time.”

Despite that, the accounts of NASA, and the UN, among others, were stripped of their “official” labels this Wednesday afternoon, fueling the general confusion.

The real-time experiment lays bare Musk’s improvised management style, which he has applied across the company in his first weeks as owner.