X Returns Twitter Blue Checks to Some Nonpaying Users. Many Don’t Want Them

Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk is no stranger to controversy, much of which he generates himself. Since his 2022 acquisition of the social media company then called Twitter, he’s also created confusion–or alternatively scorn–on the social media platform. He’s doing it again, this time by unilaterally restoring once-coveted blue checkmarks to users who lost them amid changes he made to the platform now called X.

Why are the former Twitter blue checks back, who is getting them, and how will they shape the ways people using the platform view one another? Many people and businesses that just received these new tick marks are wondering how their social media presence will be affected. The reason? The Twitter check meant an online reputation that nodded at the account holder’s responsible and respectable influence. As X users, some wonder if they’ll now be sullied by the association.

The resurrected Twitter blue checks are the latest phase of Musk’s sometimes contentious relations with his customers, a rift that began with his March announcement that accounts with sufficient followers would receive features offered to paid X services accounts for free. They include the blue checkmark verification symbols that, starting last year, were only given to users who shelled out $11 a month. 

“Going forward, all X accounts with over 2500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5000 will get Premium+ for free,” Musk posted March 28.

Prior to Musk’s revenue-seeking subscription system, Twitter employees vetted applicants to ensure they fulfilled specific criteria and could be verified to be who they claimed–a mark of authenticity for businesses, governments, media, activists, celebrities, and individuals generating public interest. The company said the aim was to provide “more transparency, credibility, and clarity” about exactly who was posting information, and hold them accountable for it.

In shifting to his fee-based verification plan, Musk derided the former process as social media gatekeeping distinguishing between “lords & peasants.” Now, though, it appears the serfs are up again, with accounts packing large follower numbers getting their checks back without charge.

But many individuals who lost those ticks for refusing to pay under Musk’s rule change in the first place are now saying they don’t want them back. That’s especially true with those marks giving the outward appearance that recipients dished out a fee to Musk for the distinction.

“People: please don’t judge for my complimentary blue check,” said original Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill, as many public figures and even lesser-known lights reacted to the former Twitter status symbol turning up again. “I didn’t pay for mine either.”

Lots of business owners and managers of company accounts will be similarly torn about seeing their blue checks reappear, and may also want to avoid looking like they’ve acquiesced to Musk’s revenue-based repurposing of the verification symbol.

Still more professional users may be concerned about the rising levels of divisiveness, belligerence, and even hate speech the subscription-based verification change produced–not to mention the impersonations of corporate accounts like Nintendo and Eli Lilly that followed its introduction.

Indeed, with Musk’s fees essentially defeating the very purpose of verification, many individual and business fans of Twitter (and haters of X) may actually consider leaving the platform altogether if they wind up stuck with the cheapened, unilaterally imposed blue check.

“(Musk) still doesn’t really understand what the value of the blue check has always been,” one-time Twitter head of product Jason Goldman told CNN. “(I)t was that when you saw a blue check on a person’s account, you knew that the person was who they were claiming to be … The value that accrued from that was for Twitter as a whole, not for the person who had a blue checkmark.”

Now it may be akin to a black mark on X, its users, and Musk himself–a smudge that business owners and company communication managers will have to weigh against the advantages using the platform still offers.