Elon Musk pays for Stephen King and LeBron James to keep Twitter blue ticks
Elon Musk has admitted he is paying for some prominent Twitter accounts to retain their blue ticks, as the social media platform launched a cull that stripped verified status from many famous names including Beyoncé, Ronaldo and Paul McCartney.
Twitter’s owner confirmed the gesture after it emerged that the writer Stephen King, the actor William Shatner and the basketball star LeBron James had retained their ticks – which confer verified status on accounts – despite not signing up to Twitter Blue, the site’s subscription service.
On Thursday Musk pushed ahead with a long-threatened promise to strip the blue tick from about 400,000 legacy verified accounts unless they signed up to Blue, which costs upwards of $8 a month in the US, £9.60 in the UK and A$13 in Australia.
<p lang=«en» dir=«ltr» xml:lang=«en»>I’m paying for a few personallyThe overnight cull meant that many famous names, with millions of followers, lost their blue check status. The names now without verified status include Beyoncé, Ronaldo, Kim Kardashian, Sir Paul McCartney, JK Rowling and Donald Trump. Twitter now has zero legacy verified accounts according to Travis Brown, a software developer who has been tracking Twitter’s subscription service, down from about 400,000 at the beginning of the month, with Blue sign-ups now at an estimated 630,000.
Under Musk’s plans for Twitter Blue, subscribers’ replies will gain greater prominence in users’ default For You feed, while tweets you interact with will also be boosted. However, Twitter will continue to display accounts that people follow in their For You feed, whether or not they are Twitter Blue subscribers. Musk has said the switch to paid-for verification is necessary to eradicate automated bot accounts and
Read more on theguardian.com
