Elon Musk had promised to take away all of Twitter’s blue checkmarks doled out to Hollywood stars, professional athletes, business leaders, authors and journalists unless they start buying a monthly subscription to the social media service.
Musk’s goal was to shove the advertising-dependent platform he bought for $44bn last year into a pay-to-play model – and maybe antagonise some enemies and fellow elites in the process.
But the Saturday deadline passed and the blue checks are still there, many with a new disclaimer explaining they might have been paid for or they might not have been paid for — nobody but Twitter knows. The company did not return a request from the Associated Press to clarify its changing policies on Monday.
Blue tick or a ‘scarlet letter’?
Matt Darling has been on Twitter for about 15 years and never cared about not having a blue check, though he would get a kick out of whenever a verified account of “some real-world importance” started following him.
People on Twitter will joke about blue checks like they’re the aristocracy but I don’t think anyone actually thought that” except for Musk, Darling said
Now, Darling finally got a blue check after paying $11 last month to try out some of the features that come with a Twitter Blue subscription. But seeing it becoming more of a “scarlet letter” under Musk than a symbol of credibility, he used a technique to scrub the blue tick from his profile.
