In a rather surprising move, microblogging site, Twitter has finally stripped several notable personalities of their Legacy verification tick on the social media platform.
Recall that for several months, the company had several instances hinted at plans to commercialise verification tick.
Africa Today News, New York reports that Twitter on Thursday yanked off the Legacy Blue Tick for prominent persons.
Checks carried out on the Twitter handles of President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu; Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party; 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump; Tony Elumelu, the Chairman of UBA PLC indicated that the verification tick had been removed.
The development affected three hundred thousand verified users who did not pay for the Blue Tick, many of them athletes, musicians, journalists, and other public figures.
After Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, the platform witnessed drastic changes geared towards boosting its revenue.
To this end, the company said, ‘Twitter Blue is an opt-in, paid subscription that adds a blue checkmark to your account and offers early access to select features, like Edit Tweet. Subscribe now with localized pricing starting at $8/month or $84/year in available countries to get the blue checkmark and early access to features’.
The development affected several individuals including journalists, celebrities and other notable individuals as Twitter insisted on a $8 monthly payment to subscribe to its ‘Twitter Blue’ if account holders must retain their verification badge.
The fee is the same for those who might want to apply newly for the verification.
Numerous checkmarks disappeared from Twitter accounts for the users who were reluctant to pay $8 a month for the traditional blue badge.
‘Legacy’ blue ticks were initially given to verified accounts belonging to people of public interest including celebrities, politicians and journalists.
But following Musk’s takeover, only those subscribed to Twitter Blue can keep a blue tick, while businesses must now pay for a gold tick.
This decision came as part of Musk’s efforts to get rid of the so-called ‘lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.’
Earlier in the month, Musk had tweeted that “Final date for removing legacy blue checks is April 20.”
April 1 was the initial date to kickstart the removal of ‘legacy’ ticks, but many remained after this date giving rise to confusion.