Elon Musk’s purge of blue check-marks from Twitter accounts verified under the company’s previous regime has begun.
Now a blue check-mark badge on Twitter primarily signifies that it’s an account belonging to someone who’s paying Musk, one of the world’s wealthiest individuals, for the perk.
On April 20, as Musk had announced, Twitter started un-checking thousands of “legacy” verified accounts — those which the company had previously deemed to be “active, notable and authentic” — unless those users were subscribers to Twitter Blue, which starts at $8 per month.
Some of the most-followed celebrities on Twitter who have lost their legacy verification status include Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez, Bill Gates, Justin Timberlake, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé.
At press time, several widely followed accounts — including Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Miley Cyrus, LeBron James and Tim Cook — still appeared to have verified check-marks. The wording on those accounts says, “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account,” a description the company introduced earlier this month.
Barack Obama, with 132 million Twitter followers, retains a blue check-mark, with the description explaining that his account is verified “because it’s an affiliate of @TheObamaOffice on Twitter.” Similarly, Musk’s account notes that he is “an affiliate of @Twitter on Twitter.” Musk recently topped Obama to become the social network’s most-followed user and he currently has more than 135 million followers.
The multibillionaire in November pledged to dismantle the legacy blue-check mark system shortly after closing the $44 billion deal for Twitter, disparaging the company’s previous verification policy as “corrupt and nonsensical.” Last month Musk, in replying to William Shatner’s complaint about Twitter’s move to force users to pay for verified status, “There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities” when it comes to verified status. Musk previously told Stephen King — who also balked at the notion of paying for a blue check-mark — “We need to pay the bills somehow!” (As of this writing, both King and Shatner still have the Twitter check-marks.)
Prior to Musk’s change allowing anyone to get a blue check-mark, Twitter had more than 420,000 verified accounts. The goal of Twitter’s original verification program, adopted in 2009, was to help people know that a high-profile user was, in fact, who they said they were to avoid confusion with imposters.