Twitter appeared to make a u-turn over its controversial blue tick subscription policy over the weekend, with several popular accounts having their blue tick badges re-instated without paying to for the privelege.
Celebrities including Beyoncé and Harry Kane and institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the BBC World news site were among those to have their blue tick restored, while BBC UK News had its gold tick restored.
Confusingly, a number of deceased account holders including Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi were also restored to blue-tick status.
The blue tick is a badge of verification previously given for free by Twitter to well-known faces and organisations to help stop fake accounts and the spread of misinformation, however Elon Musk has attempted to make the badge payable since his takeover of Twitter in a bid to improve the platform’s finances with ticks being removed en masse earlier this month.
It is now a symbol that an account has subscribed to a premium service called Twitter Blue, with a verification process attached with making the payment, costing around $8 per month.
Those with a blue tick from the original verification process, who decided not to pay the subscription fee, began losing their ticks on 20 April.
Twitter has not revealed how many people have chosen to subscribe so far, although TechCrunch, citing data from Sensor Tower, reports that the platform had around 386,000 subscribers in March 2023. This does not include subscriptions made on Twitter’s website rather than within its app but is still a small fraction of its roughly 300 million user-base.
Re-verified users including Guardian columnist Owen Jones, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Twitter comic dril have all confirmed that their new status had come without them paying for or requesting it, with some questioning the legality of Twitter giving the impression they have paid for a service they have not:
Seriously though, isn’t it some form of defamation to falsely make it look like people have purchased a product associated with being a total loser
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) April 22, 2023.
At the time of writing, Prolific North was not among those to have regained its blue tick.
