Chief Twit, Elon Musk, on Wednesday, November 16, issued a directive that will lead to the suspension of unpaid blue badges in the coming months.
Musk responded to a Twitter user who questioned whether the checkmarks for non-corporate and government officials would also disappear.
She also asked for clarification since the legacy verification has not been going on in the past few days.
“All unpaid legacy Blue checkmarks will be removed in a few months,” Musk elaborated.
At the same time, he announced a relaunch of the verification set to happen in a few weeks.
“Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29 to make sure that it is rock solid,” he stated.
Only users who will have paid Ksh2,500 (USD20) monthly subscription service will remain with their blue checkmarks.
After the relaunch, Twitter users who officially own their accounts but operate with pseudonyms will have difficulty changing to their real names, even with a verification checkmark.
They will have to lose their blue badges until the name is confirmed and verified by Twitter to meet the terms of service.
Celebrities will also not be spared if they fail to pay their monthly subscription fee.
“Being able to sort by follower count & disallowing deliberate impersonation probably solves this,” he explained.
On November 11, Musk suspended the subscription-based blue tick verification labels. This was after Twitter users took advantage of the monthly payment to attain the premium blue tick verification badge.
After the service went live, Twitter experienced a hike in false verified accounts, prompting the social media site to reconsider its choice.
Twitter's trust and safety team advised Musk to asses the negative effects of Twitter's blue badge debugging before the announcement.
“Motivated scammers and bad actors could be willing to pay to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost,” read the warning.
