Elon Musk trolls celebs – Twitter removes blue ticks

Cold calculus
Elon Musk keeps his word and removes blue ticks on Twitter – but he forces them on a few celebrities

An era ends for Twitter. Elon Musk carries out his threat and removes the blue tick from (almost) everyone who is not willing to pay for the subscription. The formerly important marking loses all meaning.

It took a while, but now the time has come: The blue, so-called verification ticks on Twitter are history. What remains is a marker for paying customers who have taken out the Twitter Blue subscription and are thus buying certain services. The old tick fulfilled a very important function: With profiles of world stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Halle Berry, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Shakira and Justin Timberlake, you could be sure that Twitter had checked whether they were actually real people (or their management) acts. That’s over now. The only meaningfulness that remains: Someone is willing to pay eight US dollars a month and has a valid telephone number. This opens the door to counterfeiters and fraudsters.

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But not only celebrities used to identify themselves with the hook. Government organizations, corporations and the profiles of clubs or associations also received an official coat of paint with the hook. That too: over. Only for companies (see star on twitter) there is an alternative with a golden tick and Profiles like that of the Pope have a gray tick. However, not everyone who has lost the blue marking wears the replacement hooks.

Twitter is said to have distributed old hooks “corruptly”.

The reason for removing the ticks is Elon Musk’s hatred of almost everything Twitter did prior to his takeover. In the past, he described the awarding of the old blue ticks as “corrupt” and accused his predecessors of throwing the verification around arbitrarily. The opposite is true – no one got the hook without a manual check.

Celebrities in particular let Musk know in advance that they didn’t think much of his new policy. Actually, the old hooks should already disappear at the beginning of April, which is why a particularly large number of celebrities reported during this period and made it clear to Musk that they were absolutely not interested in a paid subscription. Among them big names like Chrissy Teigen, LeBron James and US rapper Ice T (celebrities and companies give Elon Musk the cold shoulder – he takes revenge).

Musk “pays” some celebrities to subscribe

Elon Musk has come up with a special joke for many of his world-famous critics. You still have a catch today, but according to the current descriptive text, its meaning has completely changed. If you click James, King, Ice T, or Shatner, it says, “This account is verified because they’re subscribed to Twitter Blue and they’ve verified their phone number.” So outsiders should think that the big names are willing to pay Musk money every month. But that’s not correct.

So wrote StephenKing For example: “My Twitter account says I’m subscribed to Twitter Blue. I didn’t. My Twitter account says I gave a phone number. I didn’t.” Ice T wrote in two tweets: “Don’t believe the hype. Maybe the catch will disappear soon. Screw it.”

One reveals why the accounts still have the hook Statement by Musk himself. According to his own statements, he pays the subscription fees for some profiles “personally”. It’s more likely that the owner of Twitter simply instructed his staff to tick the boxes along with an inaccurate description. Because if you don’t look closely at what those affected have written about it (if they have it), it’s free and high-reach advertising for Twitter Blue. Shortly after removing the old hook, fans fell from Taylor Swift for example, that she is also said to be a Twitter Blue subscriber. Young fans could take this as an opportunity to also want to be part of the program.

A golden age for counterfeiters

Shortly after the changeover, more and more false profiles appeared on Twitter, which can hardly be distinguished from the formerly real accounts. This affected cities, celebrities and other well-known profiles alike. For example, while Twitter blocked a person posing as Harry Potter author JK Rowling and apologizing for her transphobic comments, the cat-and-mouse game is unlikely to end anytime soon.