What’s happening with Twitter blue checks?

Saturday’s deadline to pay for blue ticks has passed and the blue ticks are still here, with a new disclaimer.

Elon Musk had promised to remove all the blue ticks from Twitter that had been handed out to Hollywood stars, professional athletes, business executives, authors and journalists unless they purchase a monthly subscription to the social media service.

Musk’s goal was to turn the ad-dependent platform he bought for $44 billion last year into a pay-to-play model — and perhaps antagonize some enemies and fellow elites.

But Saturday’s deadline has passed and the blue checks are still there, many with a new disclaimer explaining that they may have been paid or they may not have been paid – no one but Twitter knows. The company did not respond to a request from the Associated Press on Monday to clarify its changing policies.

Blue tick or a ‘scarlet letter’?

Matt Darling has been on Twitter for about 15 years and never cared that he didn’t have a blue tick, though he would get a kick out of it if a verified account of “a real interest” started following him.

People on Twitter will joke about blue checks like they’re the aristocracy, but I don’t think anyone really thought that,” except Musk, Darling said

Now Darling finally got a blue check after paying $11 last month to try out some features that come with a Twitter Blue subscription. But seeing it become more of a “scarlet letter” than a symbol of credibility under Musk, he used a technique to scrub the blue check mark from his profile.

“Now it’s a signal of, you’re a person who doesn’t make good tweets, so you have to pay for engagement,” said Darling, an economist with the center-right Niskanen Center.

Musk has said that starting April 15, only verified accounts will appear in Twitter’s For You feed that recommends which tweets people see. Darling plans to drop the subscription – it had too many problems and he’s not looking for more online clout.

“I don’t want Twitter to be pay-for-play. I want it to be a place where people who write interesting tweets get the engagement,” he said.

Hybrid model

Instead of removing the blue checkmarks, Twitter began adding a new message to profiles on Sunday: “This account has been verified because it subscribes to Twitter blue or is an out-of-date verified account.”

That’s why high-profile verified users like singer Dionne Warwick still have their blue checks. But so is anyone who pays between $8 and $11 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription — and there’s no way to tell the difference. (Warwick, for her part, made it clear she won’t pay for a blue check because that money “goes toward my extra hot lattes.”)

That hybrid solution was good enough for Star Trek actor William Shatner, who was hesitant to sign up for a subscription before but tweeted to Musk on Sunday, “I can live with this. This is a good compromise”. But it is not clear whether this is a temporary or permanent measure.

Twitter took away at least one verified check this weekend: from the main New York Times newspaper account.

The account, which has 55 million followers, was previously marked with a gold check for verified organizations.

But a user pointed out to Musk over the weekend that the newspaper had publicly said it would not pay a monthly fee for tick status, so Musk said he would remove the tick and also discredit the paper’s reporting.