Elon Musk, the CTO and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and an acquisitor of X (formerly Twitter) announced a plan to provide all accounts with over 2500 verified followers with Premium features and all accounts over 5000 followers with Premium+ features for free on the social media platform, X.
This was followed by the famed blue ticks as a mark for verification returning with many getting it.
The lost-story of Blue Ticks
Last year, around the same time, SpaceX’s CEO announced selling the verification marks as a subscription service for $8/month thus making the marks lose their sole purpose and identity.
For years, Twitter’s tick marks were considered as an opulence which were reserved for celebrities, businessmen, politicians and other affluent people. This was changed after October 2022, when Musk became the largest shareholder of Twitter after purchasing shares worth $44 billion.
Who has got the Blue ticks back?
Some X users have already received their verification badges back. This list includes popular accounts of Bollywood celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone along with many more.
Many users received the tick for the first time despite paying for the ‘Premium’ service on X. This brought much confusion, complaints and mixed reactions among netizens. As many users have already subscribed to this service, it became a rage on X to get their money back as the media is back with the free ones.
Going forward, all đť•Ź accounts with over 2500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5000 will get Premium+ for free
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2024
The specific reason for this move is not public yet but many believed it was bound to happen someday.
Selling these badges had already led to fraud and impersonating somebody’s personality. Recently former Indian Cricket Team player, R Ashwin presumed a forged user to be Bawaal actress’ Janhavi Kapoor.
Some users are showing their annoyance on this by backlashing this move by Musk. Seeing the spam accounts manipulating their For You page with fraud business of fame is not worth entertaining for them. Many spammers and trollers purchased the verified badges and manipulated the software to get their absurd and derogatory remarks at the top of the comment bar.
At this point, many X users are expressing their frustration with these constant changes. There are even steps and guidelines being circulated by them to avoid seeing those tick marks on the profile.
“What happened? I didn’t pay for this. I would NEVER pay for this.” Actress Yvette Nicole Brown commented.
Beyond blue ticks, social media platform X is facing user and advertiser pushback along with these concerns about content moderation and the spread of misinformation and hate speech on the platform.
