It appears that Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has restored blue check marks to popular users overnight — and some of them are taking to the platform to clarify that they didn’t pay for the perk.
Musk detailed his plan to remove legacy blue checks soon after he acquired Twitter in October 2022, trashing the company’s previous account-verification policy as “corrupt and nonsensical.”Musk’s new policy went into effect in April 2023 and to keep the checks, users were required to subscribe to Twitter Blue (now called X Premium), which starts at $8 per month. However, within a few days, Musk restored the verified badges for high-profile celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé to avoid confusion over the authenticity of the accounts.
Now it seems Musk has restored the check marks for what X is calling “influential members of the community.” He first hinted at this policy in a post on March 27, writing that “going forward, all 𝕏 accounts with over 2,500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5,000 will get Premium+ for free.”
It appears that the policy went into effect on Wednesday night, as many of these “influential” users took to X to clarify that they did not pay for a Premium subscription in order to restore their blue checks.
“What happened? I didn’t pay for this. I would NEVER pay for this,” “Community” actor Yvette Nicole Brown wrote on X. “When did the Blue Check mark start getting passed around again?!”
What happened? I didn’t pay for this. I would NEVER pay for this.
When did the Blue Check mark start getting passed around again?!
