Twitter's legacy blue checkmarks remain in place, despite the platform committing to remove them on April 1.
Users of the social media site, led by billionaire Elon Musk, have been left confused as older verified users are indistinguishable from those who paid for the checkmark. Last month, Mr Musk said that legacy verified Twitter users would see their blue ticks removed unless they paid a monthly fee of $8 (£6.40).
Meanwhile, organisations would have to fork out $1,000 (£810) a month to receive a gold verification tick. Because of this, thousands of the platform's high-profile users were prepared to lose the ticks which helped to verify the authenticity of their online identity.
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While the legacy blue ticks have remained in place, Twitter has removed the blue tick from the New York Times' main accounts - the newspaper said it would not pay for verification. “We aren’t planning to pay the monthly fee for checkmark status for our institutional Twitter accounts,” the publication said in a statement on Sunday.
“We also will not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes.”
In response, Mr Musk said he would therefore remove the checkmark. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported last week that efforts to remove legacy blue ticks could take a long time due to the significant manual elements involved in the process.
Some legacy-verified Twitter accounts now have a description which reads: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”
Previously, these accounts had messages which read: “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”
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