Elon Musk has restored blue verification badges on Twitter for users with more than 1 million followers, writes The Daily Beast.
“Friends told me my blue verified check was restored. Dont know why. I’ve paid nothing. I gave no number,” tweeted Seinfeld star Jason Alexander.
This goes against Musk’s idea of paid verification on Twitter, which he started to implement recently. The $8-a-month Twitter Blue system has confused the social network. Impostor celebrities have also started appearing on the platform. So the return of free blue checkmarks was perceived by users as a capitulation of the billionaire who tried to pass it off as trolling.
“I will pay for your blue check – my gift to you,” Musk tweeted in response to a thread in which former Labor Secretary Robert Reich rejected his blue check and denounced the “oligarchs who have too much power over the Internet.”
However, in the end, all this turned out to be something more than a joke on those who criticized paid verification. Many celebrities have started getting their badges back after their brief loss. Instead, those who did not like the paid system were quick to report that the blue badges were returned without their intervention.
“Good lord, I’ve been LeBroned, Shatnered, Kinged without my consent. No means no, boys,” tweeted tech journalist Kara Swisher, criticizing the reinstatement of the blue checkmark on her account and implying that she was being compared to bigger celebrities.
Some users even advised how to get rid of blue badges. But there were also many who were happy about their return.
“I don’t know what happened but I’m happy to have my blue tick back so everyone knows I am still Malala,” the girls’ education activist tweeted.
Such a confirmation system existed for more than 10 years. It was supposed to ensure that famous people and organizations really maintain accounts on social network. But Musk repeatedly criticized it. He recently started introducing paid verification. Twitter began to remove blue ticks en masse from old verified accounts, but LeBron James, Stephen King and several other celebrities saved verification blue badges on Twitter.
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