Why Elon Musk’s cull of Twitter ‘verified’ blue ticks could prove costly
Twitter’s aristocracy is no more. Last year Elon Musk described the verification process as a “lords & peasants system” and on Thursday he deployed the guillotine. Feudalism has now given way to capitalism: money gets you status.
In a long-threatened cull, famous names including Cristiano Ronaldo, Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, JK Rowling and Sir Paul McCartney lost the blue ticks that confer verified status on accounts.
On 1 November, shortly after buying the social media platform, Musk decried the system for verification, tweeting: “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.” Soon, he wrote, users would have to pay for accreditation, adding: “Power to the people!”
<p lang=«en» dir=«ltr» xml:lang=«en»>Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.Accounts affected by Thursday’s move had not signed up to the Twitter Blue subscription service, which costs from $8 a month in the US, £9.60 in the UK and A$13 in Australia, and is now the only way of securing that coveted blue tick – unless Musk chooses to cover the cost himself. The change has stripped the blue tick from about 400,000 legacy verified accounts.
The blue tick is not just an honorific, however. Subscribers to the new service will get boosted rankings in conversations and search, while their replies will also receive greater prominence. Tweets that they interact with will also benefit.
It means that maintaining influence or presence on the platform will cost money from now on, a change from the previous system whereby blue ticks merely reassured users that the accounts were who they said they were. However, Musk has said
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