For its part, Twitter appeared to fan the flames of division by keeping ticks on both the Blue subscribers and legacy verified accounts, but changing the text on legacy accounts to say they “may or may not be noteworthy”.
It then threatened to remove all legacy verified ticks, and even gave an April 1 deadline and sent notifications to legacy verified accounts telling them to sign up for Blue, but it didn’t do it. Appearing to realise that removing the legacy ticks would reveal how pitifully few people pay for Blue, it kept them and changed the text so it was the same for all ticks.
Weeks later Twitter actually went through with removing legacy ticks on April 21, but very few people seemed to be bothered. Some celebrity accounts expressed relief they no longer appeared to be paying for Twitter Blue, while some paying subscribers complained they had been made vulnerable, and their impressions numbers were falling because of organised blocking campaigns like #BlockTheBlue.
Web sleuths continued monitoring exactly how many people were signing up, with public data showing that fewer than 500 of the 400,000 legacy verified accounts paid to keep their tick.
Days after the purge, many high-profile accounts had their ticks back, with many claiming they did not pay for them. Asked to comment, Musk said he was paying for some users’ subscriptions himself. Stephen King asked Musk to donate to pro-Ukraine charities instead (which he apparently did). Comedian Dril lost his tick, gained it back, wondered publicly whether it was illegal to make it appear as though a personality endorsed a product when they did not, and then lost the tick again.
Developer Travis Brown estimates there are between 615,000 and 650,000 Blue subscribers total, after an increase of 12,000 accounts last week. This is only a third as many signups as the week previous, and Brown said most or all of those 12,000 may have been gifted by Musk.
Loading
Most recently Twitter officially flicked the switch that gave Blue subscribers priority in reply threads, but the result was somewhat ugly. Now any sufficiently highly viewed conversation has dozens of comments from spammers, scammers, anti-trans activists and extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists right at the top, all with blue ticks, which makes engaging in conversation odious and the verification system as a whole unattractive.
The obvious lack of forward planning is probably the biggest red flag in all of this; Twitter’s leadership is barely thinking a single step ahead. It should have been obvious that blue ticks were only coveted because they were rare, mysterious and associated with celebrity, so giving them to anybody that pays while also removing them from legacy verified accounts was always going to devalue them.
That the company did not realise this, and that its response was so ham-fisted (restoring blue ticks to many celebrity and high-follower accounts, including of people who had passed away or publicly criticised the system) is symptomatic of the company’s entire approach since Musk’s takeover.
As of today, there are many problems with Twitter’s thrown-together verification program.
Most obviously it doesn’t verify anything, with accounts impersonating individuals and businesses still common on the service with official ticks. With a bit of money, you can look exactly like a verified Joe Biden or Disney Junior and say whatever you like. A blue tick may also indicate that a person has paid for Twitter Blue, or it may indicate that they’re a celebrity with many followers, but there’s no way to tell which it is (or if it’s both).
And Twitter has actually made the situation worse for itself because many of the people who might actually want to pay for a subscription to get the few legitimate benefits it brings (like tweet editing and more video options, which are both useful for aspiring content creators and self-promoters), are actively scared off by campaigns that target and block anyone with blue ticks and low follower counts.
To be clear, the previous system also wasn’t great, and ideally Twitter will end up using this experience to separate the system out into three different components that will work a lot better when they’re not linked; a verification system that prevents impersonation and spam, a paid subscription that gives access to advanced features, and shiny logos you can attach to give quick information about an account.
But maybe it should work it all out in advance this time.
Get news and reviews on technology, gadgets and gaming in our Technology newsletter every Friday. Sign up here.