Twitter Starts Long-Planned Removal Of Blue Check Marks; Purge Affects Journalists, Entertainers And Even Pope Francis

Dade Hayes
·3 min read
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Twitter has begun a wide-scale process of removing the blue check marks from verified account holders, a large swath of the platform’s most high-profile users including journalists, celebrities and even Pope Francis.

Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter last fall for $44 billion, had indicated April 20 would be the date when the long-planned revamp of the blue check system would take effect. In what he has characterized as an effort to level the playing field among all users, Musk has phased in an $8 monthly fee for blue check marks, which used to be assigned at no charge to account holders who were verified through an opaque internal process. With Musk-era Twitter starved for revenue and several times smaller in terms of its workforce than it was before, the shift makes sense to a degree but also marks a milestone in the company’s history.

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Critics of the move have noted that it could make impersonation and fraud all the more feasible. As comedian and documentarian W. Kamau Bell noted, the change certainly alters the dynamic on the platform. “It is amazing how within a few months Elon Musk turned the blue check mark from a ‘status symbol’ to ‘THIS MF’ER PAID FOR TWITTER,'” he tweeted. “It has become an object of utter mockery. Quite a remarkable achievement, really.”

As to sizing up Thursday’s changes across the Twitterscape, it would be easier to list some of the people who still do have blue check marks — among them billionaires Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban — than to catalog who has lost theirs. But the ranks of the suddenly check-less includes the official New York Times website, Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian and even Pope Francis. All have followings in the tens of millions.

There is also a more nebulous category for basketball superstar LeBron James, who publicly vowed last month not to pay for a check but still had his blue one as of Thursday evening. Stephen King, who has more than 7 million followers on Twitter, tweeted that still had his verified mark but insisted it was an error. The author had an exchange with Musk earlier this year, vowing to be “gone like Enron” if asked to pay to maintain a check mark. In a reply to King, author Neil Gaiman said it felt “liberating” to no longer have a verified symbol.

Other color-coded options for those looking to indicate legitimacy on Twitter include a gold badge for business accounts (costing a hefty $1,000 a month) and a grey one for government-related entities. While some major advertisers have stopped spending money on Twitter given the recent volatility of the platform, Disney, Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and many others brands have opted for the gold plan. Some media organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and CNN, have also paid for a gold check.

Twitter Blue, which existed in the pre-Musk era but has been redefined in the current regime, has caused rumblings for months especially given Musk’s oft-expressed disdain for the media. He recently clashed with National Public Radio after labeling the media organization as “government-funded media.” NPR quit Twitter as a result, and PBS followed suit. The BBC, ABC in Australia, CBC/Radio Canada, Korean Broadcasting System and Radio New Zealand have all been tagged as “government-funded,” prompting a backlash from critics who say the label inaccurately lumps them in with totalitarian state-run media in other countries.

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