Twitter will remove legacy blue ticks on accounts later today, if CEO Elon Musk follows through on his previous claims.
On April 11, Musk tweeted that the “final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20”. However, at the time of writing, the older style of verified blue ticks were still in place.
Twitter’s website suggests the “winding down” of the verification system began on April 1. But so far, only stunt removals have been notable. On April 2, the New York Times’s blue tick was removed after it said it would not pay for Twitter’s verification mark.
Twitter’s verification system for organisations has a base subscription cost of £1,140 per month, while each affiliated account is an additional £60 a month. These affiliated accounts might be employees, for example.
The verification system for individuals is a lot cheaper. It’s £11 a month through an iPhone or Android phone, or £9.60 a month if you subscribe through Twitter’s website.
Many notable Twitter users have said they will not pay for Twitter’s subscription, including author Stephen King, rapper Ice-T, and Seinfeld star Jason Alexander.
Where have Twitter’s blue ticks gone?
If Twitter does remove all “legacy” verification marks as Musk claimed, you will see three types of ticks on the platform.
Anyone with a blue tick will have paid for Twitter Blue. Golden ticks are for organisations, such as the BBC or Kellogg’s, who will want to make sure no one can easily spoof its identity. Government or “multilateral” accounts will get a grey tick. These include people such as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron but not, for now, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
As such, plain-blue checkmarks are no longer a sign of an account being what it purports to be. This means prominent individuals will not have a way to avoid imposter accounts impersonating their identity.
Twitter Blue offers several additional features, though. It enables editing of tweets, much longer tweets of up to 10,000 characters, bold text and italicisation, and two-factor authentication over SMS.
Musk has also suggested he “will do an ask-me-anything for subscribers only” event regularly and hold discussions on Twitter Spaces, the platform’s audio conversations feature.
