Several of Twitter’s well-known users are losing the blue checkmarks that served to confirm their identities and distinguish them from imposters on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.
After several failed attempts, Twitter started fulfilling its pledge on Thursday to eliminate the blue checks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee to preserve them.
The Cost Of Twitter’s Maintaining Blue Checkmark
Over 300,000 users on Twitter were verified under the original blue-check system, many of them were popular figures like athletes, journalists, and celebrities.
Late in the morning Pacific Time, the checks that once indicated that Twitter had verified an account’s identity began to disappear from these people’s profiles.
With an additional $50 per month for each affiliate or employee account, the cost of preserving the marks ranges from $8 per month for lone internet users to $1,000 per month for company verification.
Users who still had a blue check on their account were notified on Thursday by a pop-up window that their account has been “verified because they have registered in Twitter Blue and validated their phone number.”
Verifying a phone number merely confirms that the owner has access to it and a phone; it does not establish the person’s identity.
On Thursday, many people lost their blue checks, not just journalists and renowned people.
Many government organizations, nonprofits, and public-service accounts realized that they were no longer verified, raising fears that Twitter may no longer be a platform for accessing accurate, up-to-date information from credible sources, even in emergencies.
Although Twitter offers gold checks for verified organizations and gray checks for associated organizations, it’s unclear how the social media platform uses them, and on Thursday, they weren’t readily apparent on many previously verified government and public service accounts.
Since paying $44 billion for San Francisco-based Twitter in October, Musk has been working to expand the number of users who pay for a premium subscription on the failing network.
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Paying for Verification and Premium Features
Twitter started designating user profiles with a blue check mark about 14 years ago.
One of the main driving forces was to provide a different way to prohibit false information coming from accounts impersonating people, in addition to safeguarding celebrities from impersonators.
The majority of legacy blue checks, including those from well-known individuals, activists, and those who unintentionally make the news, as well as anonymous reporters for local media around the world, are not well-known.
One of Musk’s first product initiatives after taking over Twitter was to launch a business that issued blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 per month.
The relaunched service charges an $8 monthly subscription for web users and an $11 monthly price for iPhone or Android users.
Longer movies can be posted, less advertising is supposed to be shown, and subscribers are supposed to see tweets more prominently displayed.
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