Twitter planned to delete old verification checkmarks on April 1 ceremoniously. Instead, the social network has changed the check mark label to make it nearly hard to tell who earned it and who paid for it.
“This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account,” states the blue checkmark when clicked.
Legacy verified accounts were labeled “This is a legacy verified account” after Twitter enabled verification under the Blue membership plan. For example, the Blue account label said, “This account is verified since it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.” This allowed users to distinguish between two groups of verified accounts.
The New York Times lost its certified check over the weekend by refusing to pay for verification. Twitter CEO Elon Musk replied, “Oh well, we’ll take it off then,” to a joke about the magazine not paying for verification.
LeBron James, Patrick Mahomes II, Darius Slay, Monica Lewinsky, and William Shatner declared they wouldn’t pay for a checkmark recently.
Musk removed a post that said Twitter would offer legacy verified account holders “a few weeks grace” to subscribe to Twitter Blue before removing verification markings. The deleted message also stated that Twitter would remove the checkmark if accounts declined Twitter Blue.
Musk promises that from April 15, the “For You” algorithmic timeline will only show verified accounts and accounts a person follows. He also said over the weekend that Twitter would provide user verification dates soon.
The social network is developing a government ID verification function for Blue users to hide their checkmarks.
