It seems Twitter is constantly changing, at least since Elon Musk took over the company. And recently, the social media website changed its verification label once more, after multiple celebrities criticized the previous label, explaining that despite appearances, they didn’t pay the company $8 to keep their blue checkmarks.
Users will be presented with the message “this account is verified” if they hover over any blue checkmark (except for Musk’s) attached to the user’s accounts. Both “free blue checkmark” celebrities and Twitter Blue subscribers share the same message, obfuscating the fact that one of them is subscribed to Twitter Blue.
This change is perhaps Twitter’s way of mitigating potential lawsuits for “false endorsement” as the previous labels stated that these celebrities were subscribed to Twitter Blue, when in reality, they aren’t. A handful of celebrities, such as Stephen King, revealed their shock when it showed that they were subscribed to the program and had apparently given a verified phone number to Twitter.
Last month, Twitter made massive changes when it came to their verified users. The company purged several thousand legacy verified Blue checkmarks. Meanwhile, Musk revealed that he personally paid for some accounts to keep their blue badges. The purge was a way to push celebrities to pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions to keep their verified mark but everyone ended up celebrating their unverified status.
To mitigate the backlash and the potential devaluation of the blue checkmark, Twitter gave back the verified badges for free to a handful of celebrities who meet certain criteria, such as having a 1 million follower count. Perhaps this change would bring back the value that these blue checks had before without any risk of legal issues.
