“Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue faces backlash as celebrities regain blue ticks for free”

Big turnaround for Elon Musk and his social network Twitter. A few days after the removal of the blue tick from several accounts not subscribed to Twitter Blue, the businessman seems to be turning back. Several celebrities and high-profile personalities have had their accounts credited with the blue badge again despite not having paid anything.

Personalities and celebrities honored by Elon Musk

The repressive measure initiated by Twitter has sparked a wave of indignation on the web. It no longer allows Internet users to distinguish authentic accounts from personalities and celebrities from scammers. For good reason, having a blue tick with Twitter Blue simply means that you are a subscriber to premium services which entitles you to several advantages. To access it, Elon Musk and his team have set up several subscription formulas, the subscription of which starts from $8. However, with increasing pressure and criticism from users, the social network seems to be reviewing its position to guarantee its credibility.

Thus, several accounts of personalities and celebrities like Beyoncé, Harry Kane, Richard Osman and Victoria Beckham have regained their blue badge. Same observation on the side of James O’Brien, Eliot Higgins, founder of the Bellingcat investigative organization. In addition, billionaire Elon Musk claimed to have paid for the subscriptions of writer Stephen King, basketball player Lebron James and actor William Shatner himself.

However, other stars like Ryan Reynolds, owner of the Wrexham football club (21 million subscribers) have not yet found their badge. This delay can be explained by the fact that the team of developers behind Twitter have not yet processed all the requests under their belt. It is therefore possible that the reassignment process currently underway will continue in the coming days. As a reminder, it has been reported that removing checkmarks will be done manually.

Twitter failed with its subscription project?

Since he took the reins of the social network Twitter, the American businessman Elon Musk has continued to proclaim that the company is going through enormous difficulties. Economically, for example, it was operating with a loss of $4 million a day. Worse, it lost more than half of its value at the time of redemption and is struggling to settle certain bills with its receivables. A chaotic situation that led the CEO to consider new measures to improve his finances.

Among the key measures to recover, Elon Musk has seen fit to establish Twitter Blue, a premium subscription service. However, his announcement was very badly received by subscribers and his establishment was delayed with the appearance of thousands of fake accounts. Twitter did not reveal how many people subscribed to this new offer by playing the card of discretion.

But the application company Sensor Tower, on the other hand, indicates that the platform had around 386,000 subscribers in March 2023. Note that this estimate does not include the number of users who signed up via the Twitter website. However, Elon Musk is still very far from achieving his goal as Twitter has more than 300 million users.

Source : BBC NEWS