Elon Musk had promised to strip Twitter of all blue ticks assigned to Hollywood stars, professional athletes, business leaders, authors and journalists unless they purchase a monthly subscription to the social media service.
Musk’s goal was to push the ad-dependent platform, which he bought for $44 billion last year, into a pay-to-play model — perhaps angering some enemies and other elites in the process.
But the Saturday deadline has passed and the blue checks are still there, many with a new disclaimer explaining they may or may not have been paid — no one but Twitter really knows. The company did not respond to a request for clarification on its changed policies on Monday.
DOES A BLUE CHECK MATTER?
Matt Darling has been on Twitter for about 15 years and has never bothered about not having a blue tick, although he was always pleased when a verified account of “some real world importance” started following him.
“People on Twitter joke about blue checks like they’re the aristocracy, but I don’t think anyone really thought so,” Darling said, except for Musk.
Now Darling has finally gotten a blue check after paying $11 last month to try out some of the features that come with a Twitter Blue subscription. But seeing it become a “scarlet letter” rather than a symbol of credibility under Musk, he employed a technique to remove the blue tick from his profile.
“Now it’s a signal that you’re a person who isn’t doing good tweets, so you have to pay for engagement,” said Darling, an economist at centre-right Niskanen.
Musk has said that starting April 15, only verified accounts will appear in Twitter’s For You feed, which recommends what tweets people see. Darling plans to unsubscribe – it’s had too much disruption and he’s not looking for more online influence.
“I don’t want Twitter to be paid for. I want it to be a place where people who write interesting tweets get the engagement,” he said.
HYBRID MODEL
Instead of removing the blue ticks, Twitter started attaching a new message to profiles on Sunday: “This account is verified because it is subscribed to Twitter blue or is an old verified account.”
In other words, singer Dionne Warwick and other high profile verified users still have their blue checks. But so is anyone paying between $8 and $11 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription — and there’s no way to tell the difference. (For her part, Warwick made it clear that she won’t pay a blue check because that money “goes towards my extra hot lattes”).
This hybrid solution was good enough for Star Trek actor William Shatner, who was previously reluctant to sign up for a subscription but tweeted to Musk on Sunday, “I can live with it. That’s a good compromise.” However, it’s not clear if this is a temporary or permanent measure.
THE EXCEPTION
Twitter took away at least one verified check over the weekend: from the main New York Times account. The account, which has 55 million followers, had previously been marked with a gold-colored checkmark for verified organizations.
But a user pointed out to Musk over the weekend that the newspaper had publicly said it wouldn’t pay a monthly fee for tick status, so Musk said he would remove the mark and also belittle the newspaper’s reporting.