Twitter has always been sort of the wild west, but things have been even crazier in the months since Elon Musk took over the social media site. One of the major points of contention has been how Twitter should handle Verified status. Musk had previously announced that those who had been verified prior to his takeover were going to lose that status unless they paid for the Twitter Blue service. Many verified users didn’t love this, including celebrities like William Shatner.
Shatner used Twitter to ask Twitter owner Elon Musk directly what was going on with the verified status issue. He made it clear that he didn’t love the decision to remove the blue check mark from “legacy” verified users on April 1. Shatner didn’t understand why he would be expected to pay for something that had previously been free.
Hey @elonmusk what’s this about blue checks going away unless we pay Twitter? I’ve been here for 15 years giving my ⏰ & witty thoughts all for bupkis. Now you’re telling me that I have to pay for something you gave me for free? What is this-the Colombia Records & Tape Club?🙄March 26, 2023
Elon Musk responded to Shatner’s criticism, explaining that the goal was equality and that celebrities should not get special treatment. And while the Star Trek star said that he appreciated that idea, the problem for somebody in his position is that somebody else could set up a fake account that could look like the real thing because the check mark is available to anybody willing to pay the money.
That would be wonderful in a perfect 🌎 where equality thrives. Yet that’s not reality, is it? Somewhere, Twitter lost its way. Blue ☑️s were guardrails to legitimacy; not meaningless status symbols. Twitter does 🚫 to stop a @WlLLlAMSHATNER (4 Ls)from being verified with a 💳… https://t.co/eEuWoRaM06March 28, 2023
Shatner’s position is at least understandable. We’ve already seen people, either in an intentional move to mislead or in an attempt to point out how easily it can be done, do exactly this. Lots of Twitter-verified people probably don’t run such a risk, but bigger celebrities do. Other friends and fans of William Shatner showed support for the actor’s position.
🙄 Chuckie baby…don’t stop being you…🙄 https://t.co/IgCngwBWK0April 3, 2023
In the end, Shatner decided he would not become a Twitter Blue subscriber. The actor explained that he was fairly certain that something else would need to be done. At some point, there would be an “incident” that would cause Twitter to change these rules, and he’d just wait until we got there. He explained...
My choice is to wait for Twitter’s new guardrails; which invariably will go up after some false blue check incident happens & see if I qualify. Until then I’ll go #checkless: that’s the true equality standard …or is it in? I guess we will see. My best, #BluelessBill
Of course, we now know that, at least for time being, blue check marks aren’t going away. On April 1, instead of legacy accounts losing the check mark, a note was added to accounts that simply doesn’t differentiate between legacy and paid accounts. While not everybody loves this compromise, it works for Shatner.
I can live with this. This is a good compromise @elonmusk. 👍🏻 My best, Bill pic.twitter.com/DdPYaA9GLoApril 3, 2023
One has to wonder if it was the response of Shatner and others that led to this apparent compromise. Whether this will be the new standard, or even more changes are still on the way remains to be seen. What’s clear is that a lot of people, and a lot of celebrities do like using Twitter, and they want to keep doing so, but if the goal of Twitter is now to find ways to get people to pay for it, a new strategy is going to be needed
