Twitter Restores Blue Tick to Accounts With Over 1 Million Followers

Twitter reinstated blue tick badges for some accounts with over one million followers without charging a subscription fee.

Beyoncé, Harry Kane, Richard Osman, and Victoria Beckham are among those whose blue ticks were restored, reports BBC.

The BBC News Twitter account got back its gold badge but has not paid for it.

Before Elon Musk acquired the platform, the blue tick was a free symbol of verification provided by Twitter, said the report.

It was created as an authentication method to prevent the spread of false accounts and disinformation.

It is now a sign that an account has subscribed to Twitter Blue, a premium service, and there is a verification procedure associated with making a payment. The price varies depending on where the membership is bought, but it is usually approximately $8 per month, said the report.

Those who had a blue tick from the first verification procedure but did not pay the membership price began losing their ticks on April 20, it added.

James O'Brien, a broadcaster with 1.1 million followers, is one of many who has regained their blue tick after losing it. He admitted to not having paid for his account.

He also mentioned that some accounts with fewer than 1 million followers appeared to have had their blue ticks restored, which he described as "anointed entirely at Elon Musk's discretion."

Musk claimed that he paid for the memberships on behalf of novelist Stephen King, actor William Shatner, and basketball star LeBron James who had criticized the scheme.

Despite having over 21 million followers, certain celebrities, such as actor Ryan Reynolds, still do not have a blue tick.

It was claimed that the legacy blue ticks had to be removed manually, so this might potentially be a manual procedure that will continue in the following days.

Twitter Blue had a difficult launch. It was first delayed due to an increase of fake accounts posing to be official organizations, and in recent weeks, both subscribers and previously validated accounts have seemed identical.

Subscribers' tweets are more visible, individual messages can be longer, and they see fewer advertisements.

Elon Musk has previously stated that when he took over, the company's finances were in disarray and that Twitter was losing $4 million per day.

Twitter has not said how many users have subscribed so far, but app maker Sensor Tower projected to TechCrunch that the network will have roughly 386,000 subscribers in March 2023. This does not include subscriptions paid through Twitter's website rather than its app, but it is still a modest portion of the company's over 300 million user base.