Twitter has returned the blue verification mark to numerous celebrity, business and media accounts, without any of them having subscribed to the paid Twitter Blue service. All these accounts have something in common: more than a million followers and some notoriety, enough for the platform to distinguish them with its flagship feature. Then and now, although Elon Musk was in charge of announcing with great fanfare that he would withdraw this badge from users who did not subscribe.
Although the social network has not made any announcement in this regard, this Sunday many accounts with a large following once again wore the blue badge. When clicking on the brand, the message that appears is the same as in the case of users who have chosen to pay the eight dollars a month that the service costs and indicates that the account in question is subscribed to Twitter Blue and has provided a phone number.
But several personalities from different fields have published messages in this regard, making it clear that they had neither paid for Twitter Blue nor given their phone number and that, after losing the blue mark, it had reappeared without further explanation.
"Despite the implication when clicking on the blue badge that has mysteriously reappeared next to my name, I am not paying for the 'honor'," actor Ian McKellen tweeted.
"My blue mark has reappeared. I have nothing to do with it and I am definitely not paying," wrote the Nobel Prize winner for Economics Paul Krugman, to whom Musk himself responded with a photomontage of a crying little boy and a verified badge.
Media accounts such as the Fox News chain or the Reuters, AP, AFP or EFE agencies, which had run out of the blue badge, had it again this Sunday. However, some companies Musk labeled as progressive sported the gold mark that identifies companies that have paid for their verification on Twitter, despite the fact that they had announced that they would not do so.
Twitter has even returned the verification mark to several deceased celebrities, such as the basketball player Kobe Bryant or the chef and presenter Anthony Bourdain, a decision widely questioned by users of the social network, some even doubt its legality.
Musk is going free and he himself announced that he had personally started paying subscriptions to Twitter Blue to three celebrities: the actor William Shatner, the basketball player LeBron James and the author Stephen King, although none of them had asked him and they had even expressed with they were not going to subscribe to Twitter Blue.
The sudden changes applied by the social network come after a tiny percentage of users who had previously been verified opted to subscribe to Twitter Blue to keep the blue mark. Only 0.2% of web users pay for Twitter Blue: In March, Twitter Blue had around 116,000 confirmed subscriptions across the web, up 138% from the previous month, according to Similarweb.
This amount of subscriptions seems insufficient to compensate for the money that the company lost when various companies stopped inserting ads on Twitter with the arrival of the CEO of Tesla and XSpace. The platform's income does not grow even with Twitter Blue, a service that allows you to edit tweets and improve the positioning of comments.
