Twitter removed legacy verified blue ticks from all accounts on Thursday, April 20. Many eminent personalities in India–from Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath have lost blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the micro-blogging platform.
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.
Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt are among the big names that have lost their blue ticks on Elon-Musk owned social media platform. Politicians like CM Yogi Adityanath, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi and cricketers Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, among others, have lost their verified blue ticks from their Twitter accounts.
Those individuals who are now paying for Twitter Blue, which costs USD 8/month via the web and USD 11/month through in-app payment on iOS and Android, will have the privilege of verified blue checkmarks. Other big names who lost their blue ticks include Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former US President Donald Trump.
Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes and public figures, as per reports.
The pricing of the Blue subscriptions varies according to the market. In India, the subscription costs Rs 900 per month via iPhones and Android smartphones. On the Twitter website, the cost goes down to Rs 650 per month. Users can also go for an annual subscription that costs relatively cheaper.
Not just journalists and celebrities, many government agencies, nonprofits and public-service accounts around the world found themselves no longer verified. This has raised concern that Twitter could lose its status as a platform for getting accurate, up-to-date information from authentic sources, including in emergencies. Twitter has also laid down rules for a profile to be verified. For instance, Twitter says an account must be active in the past 30 days to subscribe to Twitter Blue. The account also must not have signs of being misleading or deceptive. Moreover, only users with a verified mobile number can get the blue tick on the platform.
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