Twitter starts removing blue checks from users who don’t pay
- Billionaire Elon Musk’s long-promised move to strip free blue ticks from Twitter users swings into action
- Famous people including pop icon Beyonce and Pope Francis among those losing verified statuses
Many of Twitter’s high-profile users are losing the blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.
After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee to keep them.
Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system - many of them journalists, athletes and public figures.
High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyonce, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former US president Donald Trump.
The costs of keeping the marks range from US$8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of US$1,000 monthly to verify an organisation, plus US$50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account.
Twitter does not verify the individual accounts, as was the case with the previous blue check doled out during the platform’s pre-Musk administration.
