Twitter\u2019s legacy blue checkmarks, which used to signify that a verified notable person was using the account, are now gone, with new owner Elon Musk preferring to include the icon in a paid subscription service instead.<\/p>\n
The move has already spurred confusion. Celebrities, government officials and other notable users that choose not to pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue, the premium version, have lost the familiar check next to their names on the app.<\/p>\n
Users immediately shared screenshots of their previous checkmarked profiles or offered other means of verification.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an authentic account representing the New York City Government,\u201d posted @NYCGov, providing a link to a government website for verification.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo you\u2019re not. THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government,\u201d replied @NYC_GOVERNMENT.<\/p>\n
Even the Pope lost his check. But some celebrities, inexplicably, retained theirs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy Twitter account says I\u2019ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven\u2019t,\u201d the author Stephen King\u00a0tweeted<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n LeBron James, the athlete who previously said he wouldn\u2019t pay for a subscription, also has a blue check by his name.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m paying for a few personally,\u201d Musk\u00a0tweeted<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Musk changed the rules in part to spur an uptick in subscriptions, which Twitter\u2019s billionaire owner has said is key to future revenue growth for the platform.<\/p>\n Advertising revenue has declined by 50% between October and March, he tweeted last month.<\/p>\n After earlier announcing the plans to remove the old checks, Musk extended the deadline to Thursday, to give some verified users more time to decide whether to pay for the service.<\/p>\n Currently, only about\u00a01% of its users<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0subscribe to the program, called Twitter Blue. More than 500 million people use Twitter every month, Musk has said.<\/p>\n Even the Pope lost his checkmark, but some celebrities retained theirs, which Twitter owner Elon Musk suggested was because he personally paid for their Twitter Blue subscriptions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":467351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[11373,405,82369,47316],"class_list":["post-488567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-elon-musk","tag-twitter","tag-verification-badge","tag-verified-accounts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: Twitter will label tweets violating hate speech rules<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"