The battle betweenTwitter CEO Elon Musk and the bequest swan account with juicy checkmarksthat for years made the weapons platform attractive is at a standstill — for now , at least . April 1 , the mean solar day Musk said he would remove checkmarks from anyone who did n’t pay $ 8 for Twitter Blue , came and go , but the dispirited checkmarks remained .
While some conjecture that the time lag was merely technological , given that there is no surefire direction to remove batch puritanical checkmarks , I ’m betting all those mellow - profile Twitter users railing against the change and declaring that they would n’t pay Musk $ 8 made the head honcho waver . Some of those cranky blue checkmarked users include LeBron James , Chrissy Teigen , and Ice - T.
“ oh my god just take the checkmark already who cares , ” Teigentweetedon March 31 .
Photo: Kevin C. Cox (Getty Images)
On the medium and organization side , The New York Times , the Washington Post , the Los Angeles Times , Insider , BuzzFeed , and Politico werenay on give for blue checkmarks(Gizmodo also is n’t paying ) . The White House alsodoes not project to branch over the hard cash .
As Nathan Hubbard , Twitter ’s former vice president of orbicular commerce and media , put it : “ tweet from high - visibility people with blue checkmarks are Twitter ’s lifeblood . ” In fact , almost all of the engagement on Twitter happens with gamey - profile history , he explained .
“ [ W]hat Twitter is going to start doing [ on April 1 ] flips the equation – it is going to postulate its most important Godhead to * pay Twitter * instead of the other fashion around , ” Hubbardtweetedon March 31 . “ If most OG disconsolate tab break off twirp in protest of being asked to pay to make the content that Twitter survive by … chirrup go . ”
So Musk oblige off . However , to save case , he but made it more difficult to tell who had a legacy blue checkmark and who had pay up for it with their Twitter Blue subscription . To be petty , Musk did take away the New York Times ’ official checkmark .
Responding to a tweet about the change reading “ checkmate , ” Muskrepliedwith “ 😌 , ” the relieved face emoji . mental confusion burst among people with aristocratical checkmarks across the platform , although at least some former critics thought it was OK .
“ I can live on with this . This is a good compromise @elonmusk , ” thespian William Shatner said in atweet . “ My dependable , Bill . ”
Click through to see more than a dozen celebrities who said “ thanks but no thanks ” to paying for their blue checkmarks .
Elon MuskHyperloopKarl UrbanOperating systemsThe Boring CompanyX ( Twitter )
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