The blue check mark on Twitter has long conferred a special status. Only certain accounts, usually those of public figures whose identities have been confirmed, have received the symbol.
Now that is changing.
From on Saturday, many Twitter accounts will lose the checkmark due to modifications made by Elon Musk, the owner of the social media company. Individual users must purchase a subscription to Twitter’s Blue service, which costs $8 per month, to earn the badge. Companies that are currently unverified you have to pay $1,000 a month if they want a gold check mark verify their account.
The move, which will help Twitter generate revenue by making certain features exclusive to subscribers, has implications for a range of users on the platform. This is what you should know.
What does the change mean for Twitter users?
For those of you who use Twitter primarily to follow celebrities and news sites, this policy change will affect what you see and read on the service.
You may see fewer tweets from the accounts you care about on your timeline, for example, because people who choose not to pay for Twitter Blue will be less visible on the site.
Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter
- Source code leak: Parts of the underlying computer code that Twitter runs on have been leaked online, a rare and major exposure of intellectual property.
- Decrease in value: Elon Musk said Twitter is now worth around $20 billion, according to an email he sent to employees, a significant drop from the $44 billion he paid to buy the company in October.
- Music licenses: Twitter is said to have explored licensing music rights to three major record labels before negotiations stalled following Musk’s takeover of the company last year.
- FTC Investigation: The Federal Trade Commission is stepping up an investigation into Twitter’s data and privacy practices and is seeking testimony from Musk.
It can be more difficult for most users to distinguish real people from fake accounts. If the checkmarks are removed from the accounts of celebrities who aren’t willing to pay for Blue, for example, it could be difficult to distinguish their accounts from those of impersonators.
Mr. Musk has said that only posts from paid accounts with blue checks will be visible on Twitter’s “For You” tab, the default timeline of tweets the platform displays based on your interests. The only exception, later he said, These will be posts from unverified accounts you already follow, which will continue to appear on your timeline.
All of this means that it’s likely more difficult to discover posts from accounts without the blue checkmarks. For example, if you follow a lot of sports news and an unverified account tweets some sports-related news, you won’t see it on your timeline unless you already follow that account. In the past, you may have come across such content simply because it went viral.
One caveat to these possible changes is that Musk is not known for always following through on his public intentions. So parts of the checkmark policy could change as Twitter implements it.
Will people start paying for check marks?
It all depends on whether the account holder derives enough value from having a blue checkmark to justify the payment.
Celebrities and institutions can choose not to pay because they already have a large following that will continue to see their posts.
The New York Times, which has nearly 55 million Twitter followers, said Thursday it would not pay for the verified badge for its institutional accounts, including @The New York City Times. The Times also told its journalists that it would not reimburse them for a subscription to Twitter Blue, except in rare cases when necessary for reporting.
But other types of Twitter users may choose to pay for checkmarks. These include some small businesses that use Twitter to market their services and want their content to reach larger audiences. In this scenario, paying for verification will essentially be an advertising expense.
Twitter is set to make some exceptions regarding which companies can keep their checkmarks without paying. In an internal document, the company said it would allow the 10,000 most followed organizations and the top 500 advertisers that have already been verified to maintain their status.
What will happen to Twitter?
Among social media companies like Meta and Snap, Twitter is the smallest social network, and the company continues to shrink in size and relevance.
Musk fired many of Twitter’s staff, leaving the company with fewer than 2,000 employees, up from 7,500 when he took over in October. The site still has issues with bots posting spam and imposter accounts posing as public figures. Security issues, glitches, and bugs are piling up. And some influencers and journalists are migrating to other platforms, including Mastodon, LinkedIn and Instagram.
