Elon Musk is giving away free Premium and Premium memberships to accounts on X (formerly Twitter) with a large amount of verified followers. Many of these accounts previously had a blue checkmark against their names before Musk acquired X and made verification a paid service.

Musk, last week, announced that X accounts with over 2,500 “verified subscriber followers” would receive a free Premium membership; while accounts with over 5,000 would receive a free Premium Plus membership.

X is facing increasing competition from Meta’s Threads and other social platforms. Not everyone who is having their blue checkmark restored is happy. Some users are posting that they had not sought out the icon to ensure their followers don’t think they had become supporters of Musk or X. Before Musk’s arrival, the verified symbol on the platform known as Twitter was generally applied to celebrities, politicians, journalists, and others in the public eye. Musk’s team started taking away the badges from previously verified users in April 2023 if they didn’t become paying subscribers.

Meta’s Threads continues to surge in the nine months since it launched as a Twitter rival. Other alternatives, such as Mastodon and Bluesky, have also grown.