Twitter begins removing blue checks from users who don't pay

This time its for real Many of Twitters highprofile users are losing the blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Muskowned social media platform After several false starts Twitter began making good on its promise on Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that dont pay a monthly fee to keep them Twitter had about 300000 verified users under the original bluecheck system many of them journalists athletes and public figures The checks which used to mean the account was verified by Twitter to be who it says it is began disappearing from these users profiles late morning Pacific TimeHighprofile users who lost their blue checks on Thursday included Beyonceacute Pope Francis Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump The costs of keeping the marks range from USD 8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of USD 1000 monthly to verify an organisation plus USD 50 monthly for each affiliate or employee accountTwitter does not verify the individual accounts as was the case with the previous blue check doled out during the platforms preMusk administration Celebrity users from basketball star LeBron James to author Stephen King and Star Treks William Shatner have balked at joining although on Thursday all three had blue checks indicating that the account paid for verificationAlso Read Twitter to restrict visibility of tweets that violate its policyKing for one said he hadnt paid My Twitter account says Ive subscribed to Twitter Blue I havent My Twitter account says Ive given a phone number I havent King tweeted Thursday Just so you know In a reply to Kings tweet Musk said Youre welcome namaste and in another tweet he said hes paying for a few personallySinger Dionne Warwick tweeted earlier in the week that the sites verification system is an absolute mess The way Twitter is going anyone could be me now Warwick said She had earlier vowed not to pay for Twitter Blue saying the monthly fee could and will be going toward my extra hot lattes On Thursday Warwick lost her blue check which is actually a white check mark in a blue backgroundFor users who still had a blue check Thursday a popup message indicated that the account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number Verifying a phone number simply means that the person has a phone number and they verified that they have access to it it does not confirm the persons identityIt wasnt just celebrities and journalists who lost their blue checks Thursday Many government agencies nonprofits and publicservice accounts around the world found themselves no longer verified raising concerns that Twitter could lose its status as a platform for getting accurate uptodate information from authentic sources including in emergenciesWhile Twitter offers gold checks for verified organizations and gray checks for government organisations and their affiliates its not clear how the platform doles these out and they were not seen Thursday on many previously verified agency and public service accounts The official Twitter account of the New York City government which earlier had a blue check tweeted on Thursday that This is an authentic Twitter account representing the New York City Government This is the only account for NYCGov run by New York City government in an attempt to clear up confusionA newly created spoof account with 36 followers also without a blue check disagreed No youre not THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government Soon another spoof account purporting to be Pope Francis weighed in too By the authority vested in me Pope Francis I declare NYC_GOVERNMENT the official New York City Government Peace be with youFewer than 5 per cent of legacy verified accounts appear to have paid to join Twitter Blue as of Thursday according to an analysis by Travis Brown a Berlinbased developer of software for tracking social media Musks move has riled up some highprofile users and pleased some rightwing figures and Musk fans who thought the marks were unfair But it is not an obvious moneymaker for the social media platform that has long relied on advertising for most of its revenueDigital intelligence platform Similarweb analyzed how many people signed up for Twitter Blue on their desktop computers and only detected 116000 confirmed signups last month which at 8 or 11 per month does not represent a major revenue stream The analysis did not count accounts bought via mobile appsAfter buying San Franciscobased Twitter for 44 billion in October Musk has been trying to boost the struggling platforms revenue by pushing more people to pay for a premium subscription But his move also reflects his assertion that the blue verification marks have become an undeserved or corrupt status symbol for elite personalities news reporters and others granted verification for free by Twitters previous leadershipTwitter began tagging profiles with a blue check mark starting about 14 years ago Along with shielding celebrities from impersonators one of the main reasons was to provide an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts impersonating people Most legacy blue checks including the accounts of politicians activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news as well as littleknown journalists at small publications around the globe are not household namesOne of Musks first product moves after taking over Twitter was to launch a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay 8 a month But it was quickly inundated by impostor accounts including those impersonating Nintendo pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Musks businesses Tesla and SpaceX so Twitter had to temporarily suspend the service days after its launchThe relaunched service costs USD 8 a month for web users and USD 11 a month for users of its iPhone or Android apps Subscribers are supposed to see fewer ads be able to post longer videos and have their tweets featured more prominentlyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever