Late Thursday afternoon, Twitter began removing blue checks — icons that indicate verified profiles on the platform — from all profiles it acquired based on the criteria in place before Elon Musk bought the company at the end of October. . Previously, blue ticks were designed to validate profiles of famous or related organizations, companies, or personalities. However, Musk announced that starting in April, Twitter will start removing all old blue checks, keeping them only for those who decide to subscribe to Blue, the paid version of the social network.
Now the blue ticks have disappeared not only from the accounts of many journalists, but also from the accounts of some of the most famous and most followed personalities on social networks, including Pope Francis, Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. In some cases, the blue check disappears and then reappears, and all profiles that were verified under the previous rules did not lose it.
This check is likely to cause a stir on Twitter in the coming days, raising the risk of malicious users paying €8 — the monthly cost of a Twitter Blue subscription — to pretend to be a celebrity who lost their blue check.
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