TechScape: Elon Musk promised to take away the blue ticks – so why hasn’t he?

theguardian.com:

For weeks, Twitter has been promising that it would be ending its “legacy” verification programme – the one that actually verifies users – and stripping the status from any user who didn’t pay.

Although the cut-off for the switchover was 1 April, the company didn’t seem to be joking. “We will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks,” it posted on its official channels. “To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue.”

Twitter Blue is, of course, Twitter’s paid-for subscription service. It offers its own form of “verification”, which requires users to submit a working phone number.

Elon Musk, the company’s increasingly panicked owner and chief executive, has been quite clear on the motivation for the switchover: he views the blue check as a status symbol that has been unfairly handed out to members of a cultural elite, and – a worse sin – inefficiently given away for free when it has monetary value.

But then something funny happened: 1 April came and went without the blue checks disappearing.

That’s not quite true, actually. Exactly one “legacy” verified user lost its checkmark when the New York Times was stripped of its status. Musk directly intervened after a Twitter user pointed out the newspaper had reportedly committed to not paying.

No other account that had made similar commitments has yet lost their blue tick, and there have been many, including basketball player LeBron James, who tweeted: “Welp guess my blue ✔️ will be gone soon cause if you know me I ain’t paying the 5.