This time it’s real.
Many high-profile Twitter users are losing blue checks that helped confirm their identity and distinguish them from scammers on Elon Musk’s social media platform.
After several failed launches, Twitter has began to deliver on its promise to remove blue checks from accounts that don’t pay the monthly maintenance fee. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the unique blue-check system — lots of them journalists, athletes, and public figures. The checks – which once meant an account had been verified by Twitter to be who it claims to be – began disappearing from the profiles of those users late this morning, Pacific Time.
Notable users who lost their blue checks on Thursday include Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump.
Sign maintenance costs range from $8 per thirty days for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 per thirty days for organization verification plus $50 per thirty days for every affiliate or worker account. Twitter doesn’t confirm individual accounts, as was the case with the previous blue check paid throughout the administration of the platform before Musk.
Celebrity usersfrom basketball star LeBron James to writer Stephen King and Star Trek’s William Shatner, balked at joining – although on Thursday all three had blue checks indicating the account had been paid for verification. It wasn’t immediately clear if that was the case or if Twitter had made an exception for them. The Verge reported James didn’t pay for his Twitter checkmark, but Musk gave it to him anyway.
![Oprah Winfrey](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000005784273.jpg?w=1024)
King, for instance, said he hadn’t paid.
“My Twitter account says I’m subscribed to Twitter Blue. I don’t. My Twitter account says I provided a phone number. I don’t,” King tweeted Thursday. “Just so .”
Singer Dionne Warwick tweeted earlier within the week that the location’s verification system “is an absolute mess”.
“The best way Twitter is going, now anyone will be me,” Warwick said. She previously promised not to pay for Twitter Blue, saying the monthly fee “can (and can) go towards my extra hot lattes.”
On Thursday, Warwick lost her blue check (which is actually a white check mark on a blue background).
For users who still had a blue check on Thursday, a pop-up message said the account was “verified because they subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.” Verifying a phone number simply implies that the person has a phone number and has verified that they’ve access to it – it doesn’t confirm the person’s identity.
According to an evaluation by Travis Brown, a Berlin-based developer of social media tracking software, lower than 5% of older verified accounts have paid to join Twitter Blue since Thursday.
![Twitter CEO Elon Musk](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009816344.jpg?w=1024)
![Pope Francis](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009846300.jpg?w=1024)
Musk’s move infuriated some high-profile users and pleased some right-wing figures and Musk fans who felt the rankings were unfair. But it surely’s not an obvious money-making tool for a social media platform that has long relied on promoting for many of its revenue.
Digital intelligence platform Analogweb analyzed how many individuals signed up for Twitter Blue on their desktop computers and located only 116,000 confirmed sign-ups last month, which at $8 or $11 a month is not a giant revenue stream. Accounts purchased via mobile apps weren’t included within the evaluation.
After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk is trying to increase revenue for the struggling platform by forcing more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also reflects his claim that the blue verification marks have turn out to be an undeserved or “corrupt” status symbol for elite personalities, reporters and others who received verification at no cost from previous Twitter leadership.
![Twitter homepage](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009916062.jpg?w=1024)
Twitter began marking profiles with a blue checkmark about 14 years ago. As well as to protecting celebrities from impersonators, one among the predominant reasons was to provide an extra tool to reduce misinformation coming from impersonating accounts. A lot of the “old blue checks,” including the accounts of politicians, activists, and folks who suddenly found themselves within the news, in addition to little-known journalists in small publications all over the world, should not widely known.
Considered one of Musk’s first product moves after the acquisition of Twitter was to launch a blue check service for anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it surely was quickly inundated with scam accounts, including those impersonating Nintendo, Eli Lilly’s pharmaceutical company, and Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX, so Twitter had to temporarily suspend the service a couple of days after it launched.
The relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for iPhone or Android app users. Subscribers should see fewer ads, have the opportunity to post longer videos, and their tweets ought to be more visible.