Von Euronews with DPA/AFP
The “blue tick” is trending like crazy on Twitter. Because Elon Musk has taken it seriously: The previously free blue verification checkmarks will be removed from Twitter accounts.
From now on, only paying subscription customers are entitled to a Twitter seal – for 9.52 euros per month and after providing a valid telephone number.
After buying Twitter for around $44 billion, Elon Musk claimed that the process for assigning ticks was “corrupt” and divided users into “lords and pawns”.
Accounts of Stars Lady Gaga, Shakira or Cristiano Ronald are now unchecked. Also recognized media from the BBC to the New York Times.
However, a few selected celebrities are allowed to keep them without being asked: bestselling author Stephen King, basketball player LeBron James and actor William Shatner who had previously criticized Musk’s subscription plans) He pays personally for these profiles – wrote the Twitter owner – but only for these three . He didn’t write why.
According to technology blog The Verge, LeBron James declined Twitter’s offer to pay for the subscription. The catch remained at first anyway.
Stephen King made it a point to state that he was not a subscription customer. “You’re welcome,” Musk tweeted back. Shatner, who is best known as Captain James Kirk in the series “Starship Enterprise” (and made a brief trip into space at the end of 2021 on board a spaceship built by Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin at the age of 90 ), wrote to Musk on the other hand: “Thanks. I suppose.”
Among the celebrities, the musicians Rihanna and Taylor Swift kept their verification symbols – and initially did not comment on what basis. Otherwise, users with the check mark often identify themselves as fans of Musk.
Now the Twitter community is divided into at least two camps: those who lost their tick and those who paid to keep the tick.
Or as Jan Böhmermann puts it: “Finally we are all the same and the assholes are easy to recognize again”.
