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Celebrities and other high-profile Twitter users are being verified again by the social media platform and they don't know why the blue ticks have reappeared, and they don't seem too happy about it. Read here: Does Twitter reset blue ticks for accounts with at least 1 million followers? Last week, Twitter removed blue ticks from accounts that don't pay monthly fees. But the checkmarks mysteriously returned for many highly-followed accounts over the weekend, prompting some prominent users to push back against what has become a divisive symbol of Twitter owner Elon Musk's erratic changes to the platform. .
Accounts belonging to Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bette Midler, gymnast Simone Biles Owens, writer Neil Gaiman and rapper Lil Nas X were among the users, all with more than a million followers, who took to Twitter to leave Clearly they had not paid. . to cash your blue check.
"In my soul, I did not pay for blue twitter, you will feel my wrath, Tesla man!" wrote the rapper with 8 million followers. Gaiman, who has 3 million followers, added: "What a sad and confusing place it has become."
Midler said Sunday: "Yeah, Elon returned my blue check but I didn't pay it. Does that make me a good guy or a bad guy? I'm so confused." But on Monday, there was no sign that he had a blue check.
Twitter had around 400,000 verified users under the original blue vetting system, including Hollywood actors and star athletes, but also journalists, human rights activists and public agencies. In the past, verifications meant that Twitter verified that users were who they said they were, as a method of preventing spoofing and the spread of false information.
But now anyone can buy a subscription to Twitter Blue starting at $8 a month. It no longer means that the user is verified, apart from confirming a phone number, but instead promises a number of features, including the ability to have more people see their tweets.
Musk has pushed for the premium service as a way to boost revenue and overthrow a "lord and peasant system" that he says has given too many people an undeserved status symbol for free. But only a fraction of users, and very few of those who previously had the blue checks, buy the service.
Read here: Tech Weekend: Twitter, Elon Musk, Apple Store and more
The inability to sell subscriptions or find other ways to make money could spell trouble for Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last year and has fought to keep advertisers, his main source of income, out of the service. platform.
