Twitter no longer verifies well-known people and removes the blue checkmarks from older accounts.
All hell has apparently broken loose after Twitter started removing blue checkmarks from historical verified accounts. The prized blue checkmark was revoked by the Elon Musk-owned microblogging site starting on Thursday. Sometime last night, users of Twitter noticed the change. Thousands of journalists, lawmakers, and government officials had their blue ticks removed as a result.
Several people have also recounted instances where the blue tick on their accounts has vanished and then reappeared.
Twitter had originally planned to delete all blue ticks starting on April 1, but eventually decided to keep legacy accounts with a pop-up notice indicating that the account was either a historical verified account or a Twitter Blue subscriber.
Even yet, some users who still have a blue tick have gotten a notice stating that their account “is verified because they were subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”American novelist Stephen King, famous for his Twitter argument with Elon Musk, went to his account to claim that even though he hasn’t signed up for Twitter Blue, he still has the blue tick.
It’s interesting to note that the ‘Verified’ option remains visible in the Notification section for the older accounts that lost their blue ticks.
With the most recent development, it appeared that many well-known people were losing the blue ticks that validated their identity and assisted them in navigating imposters on the network. Twitter has now started adhering to Elon Musk’s directive to delete any blue ticks that have not been renewed for a monthly subscription. Under the previous blue-tick programme, Twitter had over 30,000 verified users, the majority of whom were journalists, public personalities, athletes, government officials, and movie stars.
Among the well-known figures who lost were Pope Francis, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, former US President Donald Trump, Indian leaders Yogi Adityanath and Mamata Banerjee, and actor Shah Rukh Khan
Twitter wants individuals to pay $8 a month for web and $1,000 a month for organisations and an additional $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account.
Musk has been struggling to boost the platform’s decreasing income since since buying Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion. His campaign to increase subscriptions is considered as a move in that direction. However, the most recent action also supports his belief that blue ticks helped to spread some elitism. Musk has criticised Twitter’s former leadership for giving journalists and other elites free verification.