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After announcing the introduction of legacy blue checkmarks where Twitter users would pay for verification, Twitter chief Elon Musk announced that the feature will be discontinued as of April 20th. Which can be added to the list of times he referenced 4/20 in his tweets.
The introduction of legacy blue checkmarks was met with wide criticism, as the blue tik is now worth nothing.
The Blue Checkmark
It used to be a status symbol of sorts within the app, a recognition of notoriety or fame that only celebrities and politicians would have. Those qualifiers have put it out of the reach of regular people. Musk’s introduction of the legacy Blue checkmark aimed to address corruption and inequity within its previous verification system. He made it accessible to any and everyone, that, conversely, also makes the checkmark itself meaningless in this context.
It’s also not worth anything, there actually isn’t any verification involved, with Twitter only relying on ‘payment verification’ – i.e. a user’s capacity to pay – as a qualifier for the new blue tick. Even though Musk probably removed this feature out of spite, he took this announcement as an opportunity to remove the blue tik from certain legacy accounts he doesn’t like particularly publishers that he considers biased or overtly against him. Most notably The NY Times which Musk has labeled ‘propaganda’.
Paid Subscribers
Twitter currently has 600k paying users which equates to 0.24% of the platform’s overall user base. When it comes to checkmark holders, only around 4.3% of legacy have signed up following Musk’s initial removal threat, so it doesn’t seem like there will be a big influx of Blue subscribers ahead of the new deadline.
It seems that Twitter will focus on developing the paying subscribers model instead of the legacy blue ticks. The recent changes in the algorithm push tweets from paid subscribers into he “For You” page, adding another incentive to the program.
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