Previously verified Twitter users watched their blue ticks flicker and fade in real time Thursday as the social media company switched from old ticks to its paid Twitter blue policy. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in Novemberhas dangled for months on promises to remove ticks from “old” verified accounts (aka people who had a free tick) — and rid the social media platform of what Musk called “Lord and pawn system.”
Given Twitter’s recent chaotic rollouts, things have gone as well as you’d expect. Anyone with $8 a month to spare and a phone number to verify their identity can purchase the verified tick. People connected to Twitter now get a square badge, and there are several other options for government accounts or large corporations, too. The Pope’s blue tick was briefly removed on Thursday – hard! – but it was replaced on Friday with a gray denoting, for example, a “government or multilateral organization”.
Won’t that create confusion about who’s real and who’s not?
The short answer is yes. Almost immediately after the Twitter check finger snapping, people started setting up fake profiles and impersonating officially official Twitter accounts. This was particularly problematic for unverified government accounts like that of New York City, which was immediately parodied. The City of New York official Twitter posted that it is the authentic account and another account with a simple handle and the profile picture showing the same NYC logo as the official account responded and denied that it is in fact about the real traded account. (The girls fight!)
Plenty of other parody jokes have emerged from the mess, including a genuinely disgusting-looking fake New York Times Cooking tweet sharing a meme recipe of a hand-moulded M&M cookie over Greek salad called “King’s Hand.” Another account surfaced posing as JK Rowling. In a now-deleted tweet (later circulated as a screenshot), impersonating Rowling, said: “I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for all 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 where I really was.” The tweet has since suspended the poster.
This isn’t the first time Twitter has faced verification-related chaos. In November, when Twitter Blue first went live, a number of accounts posing as previously verified, official accounts surfaced. These included a Nintendo impersonator posting a picture of Mario upsetting people 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 tick to the title of your account on Twitter. It will also give paid users access to certain features, such as the edit button, SMS two-factor authentication and the ability to tweet up to 10,000 characters, for example. Twitter Blue subscribers also get a supposed “boost” to their tweet rankings, meaning they rank higher in searches or replies. It costs $8 per month or $84 per year. Any Twitter account that has existed for more than 30 days can buy a blue tick.
The only requirement is verification of a phone number. The original blue ticks were intended largely as verification of public figures to prevent impersonation of celebrities, news organizations and journalists or government bodies. The Verge reports that an influx of hoaxes during Hurricane Sandy partially inspired its creation. Now the tick simply means you were willing to pay for it.
Twitter Blue subscribers are of course denoted by the blue tick, but also by a pop-up readable by hovering over the tick. “This account is verified because they subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number,” it says. The gray tick on an account like the Pope’s says it’s verified “because it’s a government or multilateral organization account.” The gold ticks refer to “official organization”.[s] on Twitter,” meaning the company is paying a reported $1,000 a month for the badge through the Verification for Organizations program. However, it is free for the 10,000 most followed organizations on Twitter.
Who actually pays for Twitter Blue?
An estimated 600,000 to 635,000 people subscribe to Twitter Blue, according to independent researcher and software developer Travis Brown. Twitter has a total of around 450 million monthly active users. according to reports.
Many celebrities, like basketball superstar LeBron James and writer Stephen King, have scoffed at the idea of paying for a Twitter Blue subscription. The simple answer is that there really isn’t any incentive for them – as big accounts, they already have a lot of people reading their tweets. You don’t necessarily need this increase. The other “perks” aren’t enough to affect them either. The verification process is so minimal that saying your account is legit doesn’t mean much either; someone else can apparently get a blue check in their place. Several celebrities said they are exiting the platform without, or at least considering, a more rigorous form of verification.
My Twitter account says I’m subscribed to Twitter Blue. I did not.
My Twitter account says I provided a phone number. I did not.— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 20, 2023
James and King were two of the more outspoken celebrities to talk about verification — or their lack of desire to pay for it. Musk responded with the words He personally paid for their Twitter Blue subscriptionsand William Shatner, who appears to dismiss his earlier statements that Twitter would “give” Bluepower to the people‘ and stop giving preferential treatment to the Twitter elite.
Shatner tweeted “I accept” about Musk’s free Twitter Blue subscription, while King alerted his followers to the check — that he didn’t pay for it. James hasn’t tweeted about verification since the blue ticks were removed en masse.
