The ongoing saga over Musk’s plans to change Twitter’s checkmark policy and how it labels accounts since he took over the company in the fall has escalated into a bubbling fight with multiple media outlets.
Musk said last month that the legacy verified accounts would start having their badges removed by April 1 if they did not subscribe to Twitter Blue, a subscription service that costs $8 a month for additional Twitter features.
When the deadline hit over the weekend, though, most of the legacy checkmarks appeared to remain, with a new distinction: When users clicked on them, a pop-up explained that the account was verified “because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”
The changing process and seemingly vague guidelines are raising questions about who will pay for a checkmark and how it impacts the spread of information on the platform.
Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse University, said the blue checkmarks “died a long time ago” — when Twitter introduced the official institution badges in November, including different color check marks for verified corporate accounts and government accounts.
“He burnt down the Twitter of the past, whatever we knew that to be, and he created this new platform,” Grygiel said.
Twitter recently also apparently singled out The New York Times, removing its verification badge for its main account that boasts 55 million followers. Meanwhile, it slapped NPR this week with a “state-affiliate media” label, sparking pushback from the company.
Read more on confusion surrounding the checkmarks at TheHill.com.
