On Twitter - Celebrities, Journalists Enraged As They Lose Their “Verified” Blue Checkmarks

Over the past few days, a progressive anger has been growing on Twitter, as the platform’s legacy system of blue “verified” checkmarks, given to formerly handpicked users, came to an end, in favor of the new system open to all users willing to pay a subscription fee. The new system began on 4/20/23, resulting in users who had been verified under the old system, mostly journalists, celebs, as well as public figures losing their hallowed checkmarks.

By choosing the $8 subscription option, that is now available to all users, those persons could easily re-acquire their checkmarks. Instead, many chose to descend into a fit of rage at the loss of their once-exclusive identifier. There has been no shortage of complainants. Sone examples are-

• Bette Midler tweeted, “Elon, deciding that I’m not me, I’m a fake, & obliging ME, who has contributed mightily to your platform, (at least until you “tweaked the algorithm & tanked my metrics”) to pay monthly because you don’t have enough money & you’re humiliated b/c everyone thinks you’re a pathetic douche, is the funniest thing you’ve ever done,”

• Dan Rather, mused “Today proves yet again that you can’t buy class but you can buy a blue check mark,”

• Liberal author John Pavlovitz said “Today I lost a blue check mark, and saved both 8 bucks a month and my dignity,” …“I win”

• Morning Joe, hosts condemned the “chaos” of the change, including the potential effects on “democracy.”

• An angry Alyssa Milano tweeted “So by revoking my blue check mark because I wouldn’t pay some arbitrary fee, someone can just be me and say a bunch of bullshit. “Does that mean Twitter and Elon Musk are liable for defamation or identity theft or fraud?”

• Mueller She Wrote, the official account of, a Trump-era podcast promoting the Russiagate hoax - tweeted “WE are the content creators. WE are why advertisers are here. And WE create all this content FOR FREE. YOU should be paying US,”

In the past, Twitter’s blue check mark, quickly became a prize handed out to favored users by employees at the formerly woke company. The system was originally created to protect prominent figures from impersonation. Many less-prominent accounts, with fewer than ten thousand followers, were not even offered the verified status.

Literally the system rewarded those it saw as ‘on par’ with its woke agenda and tried to negatively influence those in opposition by refusing the “verified” status. As an example, Twitter formerly refused to give “verified” status to prominent conservative and anti-establishment accounts that they considered questionable. Examples include the accounts of Julian Assange and James O’Keefe.

Introduction of the paid verification system by Musk, puts an end to the previously biased regime, but created its own set of problem. Entities such as impersonators and pranksters now can “pay” for a blue check mark, to appear more authentic, hindering the verification of these accounts. No doubt transitioning to the new the system is keeping Musk’s engineers hopping.

However, the new system also has its potential benefits. Since unverified accounts will have to compete against what will likely be a much larger mass of verified accounts, it will raise the costs of operating effective spam bots, which may continue to be privileged in Twitter’s algorithm.

Musk reportedly appeared, over the weekend, to relent to at least some of the former blue checkmark masses. He seemingly provided the hallowed blue verified check marks, to a variety of celebrity accounts. This appeared done without much logic to his choices, but then he does own the platform.

Nevertheless, the transition from status based to pay to be verified, has been an issue for many. Those entitled persons, seemingly are the ones yelling the loudest, though the $8 price tag is well within their price realm. For them, it is apparently - we shouldn’t have to pay – we are special.

A lot of subscribers, however are just paying the fee without fanfare. Likely they understand that nothing is free, especially in this economy. Those who have time to nurture their follower accounts should know better. Change it seems is always hard for some – hopefully in this case, it’s for the better.

"Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful, it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful, it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident, it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better."

-King Whitney Jr.