Twitter’s legacy blue checkmark removal, explained

Twitter’s paid Twitter Blue program is a new policy that will replace the legacy checkmarks. Formerly verified Twitter accounts saw their blue checkmarks disappear in real time. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in November, has been dangling the promise of removing checkmarks from “legacy” verified accounts (a.k.a. people who had a checkmark for free) for months — freeing the social media platform from what Musk has called a “lords & peasants system.”

It’s gone as well as you’d expect, given Twitter’s recent history of chaotic rollouts. The verified checkmark can be purchased by anyone with an $8 monthly budget and a valid phone number for confirming their identity. Twitter-affiliated users get square badges, but there are other options, such as for large businesses or government accounts. The Pope was briefly stripped of his blue checkmark on Thursday — harsh! — but it was replaced with a gray one on Friday, denoting a “government or multilateral organization,” for instance.

Won’t this cause confusion over who is and isn’t real?

Yes, in a nutshell. After the Twitter Check Finger Snap, many people began creating fake Twitter accounts and setting up fake Twitter profiles. The problem was particularly acute for unverified government-related accounts such as the New York City account, which immediately became a parody. City of New York’s official Twitter account posted that this was an authentic account. A second account that had a profile image that displayed the NYC logo and a handle that was simple responded that they did not believe it to be the true account. The girls are fighting!

Plenty of other parody jokes have come out of the mess, including a truly gross looking fake New York Times Cooking tweet, sharing a meme recipe of a hand-shaped M&M cookie over Greek salad called “King’s Hand.” Another account popped up impersonating J.K. Rowling. In a later deleted tweet circulated as a screenshot), the impersonation of Rowling said “I want to take this opportunity to apologize for all of the things i have said and done that have caused such material harm to the transgender community […] I was on Ambien for a really long time and didn’t realize how my actions affected other people or really even where I was.” The tweet has since gotten the poster suspended.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has struggled with verification-related chaos. Twitter Blue went live in November. Several accounts were created to impersonate verified accounts. This included a Nintendo impersonator posting an image of Mario flipping people off, and a parody of Rockstar’s account announcing a fake Grand Theft Auto showcase.

What is Twitter Blue?

Twitter Blue is a paid service that adds a blue checkmark to your account’s title on Twitter. It’ll also give paid users access to certain features, like the edit button, SMS two-factor authentication, and the ability to construct tweets up to 10,000 characters, for instance. Twitter Blue subscribers also get a supposed “boost” to their tweet rankings, meaning they have higher ranking in search or replies. Costs $8 monthly or $84 per year. Any Twitter account that’s existed for more than 30 days can buy a blue checkmark.

Verifying a telephone number is the only thing required. The blue checkmarks originally were meant to be used as a means to verify public figures and to stop impersonations of journalists, celebrities, news organisations, government agencies, etc. It was reported by The Verge that the vast number of fake accounts created during Hurricane Sandy inspired this creation. Checkmarks simply mean that the user was willing to spend money on it.

Twitter Blue users are identified by the blue checkmark, and also a popup that appears when you hover over the check. “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number,” it reads. The gray check on an account like the Pope’s reads that it’s verified “because it is a government or multilateral organization account.” The gold checkmarks are relegated to “official organization[s] on Twitter,” which means the company pays a reported $1,000 per month for the badge, through the Verification for Organizations program. It’s free for the top 10,000 most-followed organizations on Twitter, however.

Who pays for Twitter blue?

Travis Brown, an independent researcher and software designer, says that approximately 600,000-635,000 people are subscribers to Twitter Blue. According to reports, Twitter’s monthly active user base is around 450,000,000.

Many celebrities have laughed at the notion of paying for Twitter Blue, including basketball star LeBron and author Stephen King. The simple answer is that there’s really no incentive for them — as large accounts, they already have a ton of people reading their tweets. They don’t necessarily need that increase. The other “perks” aren’t enough to sway them, either. The verification process is so minimal that it doesn’t mean much, either, to say their account is real; someone else can, seemingly, get a blue check in their place. Several celebritiesWithout a more rigorous verification, they said, “We are considering leaving or even abandoning the platform.”

James and King were two of the more outspoken celebrities talking about verification — or their lack of desire to pay for it. Musk responded by saying he was personally paying for their Twitter Blue subscriptions, as well as William Shatner’s, seemingly rebuffing his previous statements that Twitter Blue would give “power to the people” and stop giving preferential treatment to the Twitter elite.

Shatner tweeted “I accept” to Musk’s complimentary Twitter Blue subscription, while King alerted his followers about the check — that he didn’t pay for it. James hasn’t yet tweeted about verification since the mass removal of blue checkmarks.