After a brief hiatus on April 20, Twitter has begun reinstating the verification badge to large accounts – accounts with over one million followers – even if they didn’t pay for it.
According to reports, the blue tick returned to accounts with more than 1 million followers over the weekend. Some of the reinstated verified account users have said they were not subscribed to Twitter Blue; Twitter’s verification subscription product.
Writer Neil Gaiman wrote on his Twitter wall, “For the curious, I’m not subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t given anyone my phone number. What a sad muddled place this has become.”
Footballer Riyad Mahrez who also got his Blue badge back tweeted, “… and no, I didn’t pay for the blue tick,” ending his statement with two laughing emojis.
While media personalities Richard Osman, Janel Parrish Long and more have tweeted about getting their blue check badges back on their accounts despite not paying any subscription fees, some accounts with over 1 million followers still haven’t got their blue check badges restored.
Travis Brown, a programmer and Twitter user said he has analyzed accounts with over one million followers and almost 110 accounts don’t have the twitter blue badges.
These include Actor Ryan Reynolds and Social media influencer Felipe Neto.
Travis tweeted “I just checked on this and found 110 accounts with more than a million followers that are not marked as Blue subscribers out of a total of 9,884. The Largest non -Blue account belongs to Ryan Reynolds followed by Tesla.”
On his GitHub page, where he posts regular updates about Blue subscription, Travis noted that only 4.8% of legacy verified accounts were subscribed to Twitter Blue at the time the checks were removed and the number of verified accounts have only recorded a net increase of 12,000.
On 20th of April, Twitter removed it’s blue check badge from all non Twitter Blue subscribers, resulting in many celebrities and public figures stripped of their verification badges.
A day after, Elon tweeted that he has “personally paid” subscription fees for Stephen King, LeBron James and Star Trek actor, William Shatner, emphasizing in his tweet, “just Shatner, LeBron and King.”
The turn of events in the last 12 hours however suggest that Musk may have extended the gesture to more than these three.
