Elon Musk’s X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has begun restoring free blue checks to some users, but this latest unexpected change has caused a lot of confusion on the platform. Ta.
For many years, Twitter blue check Mirror verification badge common on social media. Primarily limited to celebrities, politicians, and other influential accounts.
That changed a few months after Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion in October 2022.
Last year, X began issuing certified checks only to those who paid a starting price of $8 a month and stripped verified badges from many celebrities and other high-profile accounts.
This caused confusion and complaints, and led to the creation of a large number of fake accounts pretending to be other people, including Blue Check.
But late Wednesday night and early Thursday, many users reported seeing blue checks back in their accounts, or for the first time, even though they hadn’t paid for X’s “premium” service. Did.
musk said last week All X accounts with more than 2,500 verified subscriber followers will now get free access to premium features, including Checkmark, and accounts with more than 5,000 people will get Premium+ for free.
The specific reasons behind this new policy were not clear. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Thursday.
Reactions were mixed. While a few users were excited about the validation, others were frustrated.
“What’s going on? I didn’t pay for this. I’ll never pay for this,” said actress Yvette, who appears to be one of the celebrities who saw the blue checks returned. Nicole Brown wrote in a post Wednesday night.
X’s blue checks have also evolved into what some argue is a sign of the platform’s new ownership and support for subscription models, and several other accounts have been newly placed by configuration changes. I even shared the steps on how to remove those blue checks.
In a post about blue checks this week, some users shared notifications they received on the platform, saying they could get a free premium subscription “as an influential member of X’s community.”
Multiple AP staffers had also received certification statuses they had not paid for or requested as of Thursday.
Beyond the blue check, X has faced backlash from users and advertisers amid ongoing concerns about content moderation and the proliferation of misinformation and hate speech on the platform, which some researchers believe states that it is the cause. on an upward trend Under the musk.
big name Brands such as IBM, NBCUniversal, etc. and its parent company Comcast in November after a report by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters showed that the company’s ads were running alongside content glorifying Nazis. announced that it would stop advertising. Signaling another setback in Company X’s bid to recoup advertising dollars, the platform’s main source of revenue, Musk accused the company of “blackmail” and said it would effectively He responded with an expletive-filled tirade, telling him to leave.
X has since sought to sue those who have documented the prevalence of hate speech and racism on the platform, including Media Matters and the nonprofit Center to Combat Digital Hate. A federal judge last week dismissed the lawsuit against the center.
