Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, said on Tuesday, April 11, that historical blue checkmarks will be removed from Twitter accounts verified under the company’s previous administration, with a deadline of April 20. This implies that users who have vintage verified Twitter accounts with a blue checkmark will have to pay to preserve the checkmark. According to Musk, the only accounts that would retain their blue checkmarks are those that have registered for Twitter Blue, the company’s membership service.
Twitter Blue is priced differently in various countries. It costs Rs 650–900 per month or Rs 6,800 per year in India. Twitter previously stated that, starting April 1, the blue checkmark badges on legacy verified accounts will be removed unless users pay up for the Twitter Blue subscription service.
On April 2, Twitter changed the language in the description of verified users to say, “This account is verified because it is a legacy verified account or subscribed to Twitter Blue.” As a consequence, it is no longer feasible to tell which users paid for the blue checkmark and which did not.
Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2023
Several famous people have declined to pay for verification. For example, basketball player and entertainment producer LeBron James tweeted on March 31 that his blue checkmark will most likely disappear since he refused to pay for verification. Nonetheless, @KingJames remains verified for the time being.
According to Musk, the move to paid verification is primarily intended to generate much-needed income for Twitter while also combating bots. Musk remarked, “We need to pay the bills somehow!” after Stephen King rejected the notion of paying for a blue checkmark.
Meanwhile, Twitter has begun a scheme that allows corporations and groups to charge $1,000 per month for verification badges (gold for brands, companies, and nonprofits; grey for governments). Twitter first launched verified accounts in 2009 to help users identify the real accounts of prominent individuals such as celebrities, politicians, corporations, brands, and news organisations.
