Elon Musk on Tuesday set a deadline of April 20 for purging legacy blue check-marks from Twitter accounts verified under the company's previous regime.
This will effectively mean that owners of verified profiles with a legacy blue tick will have to pay the subscription fee to keep the checkmark as reported by ndtv.com. Once the deadline expires, only those under Twitter’s subscription service Twitter Blue will get to keep the blue tick.
The issue of paying for verified accounts and the introduction of the subscription service when Musk took over Twitter had kicked up a storm among several celebrities.
Noted personalities like NBA star LeBron James and Stephen King have publicly rejected the very notion of paying for a blue checkmark. Musk had responded to the popular author saying, "We need to pay the bills somehow!"While many Twitter users have asked Musk not to implement this latest change, Musk has remained firm on his decision. His interactions with Twitter users on this contested issue were accompanied by his tongue-in-cheek humour to drive his point across.
Twitter Blue is priced differently across nations. In India, the subscription service is priced at Rs 900 on mobile devices while the subscription cost on the web is Rs 650. As per media reports, Twitter had previously announced April 1 as the deadline to begin the removal of the blue checkmark from legacy verified accounts.
Twitter has also commenced a program for businesses to charge $1000 for verification badges– gold for brands, companies and nonprofits, and grey for government authorities.
The verified accounts feature of Twitter was first introduced in 2009 as an aid against impersonation and parody accounts so that people can easily identify the actual accounts of celebrities, politicians, companies and brands, and news organizations. This service did not carry any charges.