Twitter celebs baulk at paying for blue check mark
After months of delays, Twitter owner Elon Musk promises that Saturday is the deadline for people to posit or lose their legacy status.
William Shatner, Monica Lewinsky, and other prolific Twitter commentators — some household names, others little-known journalists — could soon lose the blue ticks that helped verify their identities on the social media platform.
They could get the points back by paying up to $11 per month. But some longtime users, including 92-year-old Star Trek legend Shatner, are hesitant to buy the premium service championed by Twitter’s billionaire owner and CEO Elon Musk.
After months of delays, Musk is gleefully promising that Saturday is the deadline for celebrities, journalists and others verified for free to post or lose their legacy status.
“It’s going to be delicious,” he tweeted Monday, in response to a Twitter user who noted that Saturday is also April 1.
After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk is trying to boost the struggling platform’s revenue by getting more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also echoes his claim that the blue verification marks have become an undeserved or “corrupt” status symbol for elite personalities and news reporters.
In addition to verifying celebrities, one of Twitter’s main reasons for marking profiles with a free blue check from about 14 years ago was to verify politicians, activists, and people suddenly in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the world, as an additional tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts impersonating individuals.
“Pay for something you gave me for free”
Lewinsky tweeted a screenshot on Sunday from all the people impersonating her, including at least one who appears to have paid for a blue tick. She asked“What universe is this fair to people who may suffer consequences for being impersonated? a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets out the door.”
Shatner, known for his irreverent humor, also tagged Musk with a complaint about the promised changes.
“I’ve been here for 15 years giving my (clock emoji) and witty thoughts all for bupkis,” he wrote. “Now you’re telling me I have to pay for something you gave me for free?”
Musk replied that there should be no other standard for celebrities. “It’s more about treating everyone equally,” Musk tweeted.
For now, those who still have the blue check but apparently haven’t paid the bounty — a group that includes Beyoncé, Stephen King, Barack and Michelle Obama, Taylor Swift, Tucker Carlson, Drake, and Musk himself — have added posts to their profile saying that it is a “legacy verified account”. It may or may not be remarkable.”
But while “celebrity is a fair bit of focus because of our culture,” the bigger concern for open government attorney Alex Howard, director of the Digital Democracy Project, is that impersonators can more easily spread rumors and conspiracies that could shake markets or harm democracies. the world.
“The reason authentication exists on this platform was not just to designate people as notables or authorities, but to prevent impersonation,” Howard said.
One of Musk’s first product moves after acquiring Twitter was to launch a service that awards blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it was soon overrun by impostors, including accounts posing as Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter had to temporarily suspend the service days after launch.
The relaunched service costs $8 per month for Internet users and $11 per month for iPhone and iPad users. Subscribers would see fewer ads, post longer videos and have their tweets appear more prominently.