Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, announced a new deadline for the deletion of the Blue verification ticks from legacy verified accounts on the microblogging site. “Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20,” Musk said in a tweet.

This was the latest among the several times Musk did a back and forth on the Twitter verification issue, confusing users. In light of introducing the subscription format through Twitter Blue, Musk has made a slew of announcements to ensure people subscribe to it. Among them was the move to remove legacy verification ticks altogether. While legacy verified ticks were supposed to be axed from April 1, the date was later changed.

Twitter Blue, without question, has been one of the most talked about and contentious changes that was made to Twitter since Musk took over the company. Musk’s initial announcement of the subscription had faced huge backlash, with several notable people asking Musk to take it back. Musk stayed adamant and the feature was rolled out in India in February.

While several legacy verified users have said they will not pay to retain their blue ticks, there are others who have subscribed to Twitter Blue and see several benefits with the product.

In the defence of Twitter Blue

Gayatri, a therapist and an author, is all in favour of Musk’s new subscription model. Speaking to BOOM, she enumerated the perks she has been enjoying off the subscription. “I like that I can now edit my tweets whenever there is a typo. This has to be the number one benefit for me.”

The Twitter Blue subscription costs $8 (Rs 656) per month via web and $11 (Rs 902) per month through in-app payment that provides users with several features that include longer tweets with upto 10,000 characters, edits to tweets up to five times within the first 30 minutes of tweeting and prioritised rankings in conversations and search.

Since Gayatri is a therapist, she often uses the platform to spread awareness on mental health. “I prefer a long tweet instead of threads as it is more coherent that way and because of the subscription there is no limit on the character count.” She also appreciated her better reach since she availed Twitter Blue. “I can feature on the ‘For You’ tab and appear on the feed of people who do not follow me. As a therapist I would always want more people to read my tweets.”

Gayatri isn’t alone in seeing the benefits of having a Twitter Blue. For Mehran, a final year MBBS student hailing from Kashmir, the blue tick gives him a sense of credibility. “It also signifies a level of prestige, recognition, and status. Besides, it helps me to gain more followers and increase my visibility,” he said.

A symbol for the ‘elite’?

The verification process on Twitter has gone through a journey of its own over the years, and more so in the past few months. Earlier, the coveted blue tick beside the user’s name was only given to notable personalities who had a public facing profession, after a due verification process carried out by the social media platform. These are the accounts that are now being called legacy verified accounts.

The verification process has now gone through drastic change, courtesy Musk. Since his takeover of Twitter in 2022, Musk has been vocal about the earlier process of verification, calling it "corrupt". “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” Musk had said in November, amid backlash.

Musk’s intervention was not the first time the Twitter verification process was mulled over. Twitter had paused its verification programme entirely in 2017 while it figured out how to improve it. This project was deferred until late 2020, when Twitter reopened the discussion about account verification. In 2021, they made it possible for anyone, regardless of follower count, to request Twitter verification.

As a user Gayatri also felt that the increase in reach is paving way for a democraticised platform for users. “Once a publication refused to publish my book because I had low follower count which apparently made me less popular on social media.”

Opining on how the legacy based verification process was undemocratic, Gayatri said, “Traditional media has a knack of deciding who is important, which is completely privilege-driven. If everybody pays equally for the benefits, it’s more honest that way,”

According to Gayatri the blue tick is no more about credibility but additional perks and if we tend to look at it that way, it will solve the issue. “It is just like Youtube Premium or Spotify Premium where we are paying to not be bugged with advertisements, hence, added benefits,” said Gayatri.

How is Twitter Blue benefitting subscribers?

Mehran has been using the microblogging platform since 2015 and has around two thousand followers. He availed the subscription in December 2022, and enjoys perks like increased word limits, editing tweets and his enhanced visibility on others’ timelines, which comes with it.

His tweets mostly include positive quotes related to life and his takes on current socio-political events. He wishes to continue tweeting about these things in future, aided with his increased reach now.

Shafait Yaseen, a relationship manager at Nexa, subscribed to Twitter Blue a month ago and feels that the ‘blue tick’ adds a sense of “class” on his Twitter profile. Yaseen is also a social activist working for the pahadi tribes of Jammu and Kashmir.

Posting longer videos, increased word limit on tweets and getting priority in replies amongst the non-subscribers are some of the Twitter Blue perks Yaseen enjoys. “Whenever I tweeted earlier without the blue check mark I saw my tweets went unnoticed most of the time. But now things have changed and I am happy to see an upward trend in my reach,” he said.

Currently, Shafait Yaseen has more than 200 followers on Twitter. He joined the social media platform in 2016.

While there are definitely takers for the subscription, it is not clear how many subscribers Twitter Blue has as Twitter has not officially revealed the number. A report by TechCrunch cited the estimates shared by Sensor Tower, a market research company, in this regard. According to the estimates, as of March, Twitter Blue has more than 3,85,000 mobile subscribers worldwide on both iOS and Android, with 2,46,000 subscribers from the US alone.

But are blue ticks for all a good thing?

Thanks to Twitter Blue, anyone willing to spend $8 for a month can sport a blue tick against their name. But the absence of regulation in this feature unluckily led to impersonations by many bad actors, when the subscription model was initially rolled out in November 2022. The chaos was just a peek into the power the blue tick holds.

Several fake and parody accounts such as '@jesus', '@teslareal' and '@EliLiIlyandCo', among others, managed to get verified. Parody tweets from these accounts and even fake information left people on Twitter confused. Eli Lilly and Company, an American pharmaceutical company that produces insulin, was forced to issue an apology after the fake verified account '@EliLiIlyandCo' tweeted announcing free insulin for everyone. The actual Twitter handle of the company, '@LillyPad' tweeted saying, "We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad"

Following the chaos, Twitter Blue was briefly halted before being relaunched in December of the same year.

Even during initial chatter about Twitter Blue, it was legacy verified users who had pointed out that Musk’s system was flawed, and that the blue tick was not to be a part of an elite club, but to avoid impersonation.

The fears regarding burgeoning trolls and impersonations still remain for many Twitter users. Rituparna Chatterjee, Deputy Asia Editor at The Independent, has a legacy verified account on Twitter but does not wish to retain her blue tick, as she feels now “the definition of verified so ambiguous that it will be easy for an abusive troll to get the same visibility on paying money as that of a legacy verified expert in a certain field.”

Speaking to BOOM, Chatterjee reckoned that it was around 2009-2010 when she got verified as the verifications were being done in bulk for several journalists from many branches including web and TV. As someone who writes mostly around gender and feminism, her verified account helped her an extra mile in reaching those invested in these areas.

With the introduction of Twitter Blue, Chatterjee is happy to lose the blue tick because “it’s meaningless now if it’s indistinguishable who paid for it and who didn’t”. Earlier, one could tell apart a legacy verified account from one that was subscribed to Twitter Blue. But after a recent development, clicking on the blue tick on any account shows the message, "This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account."

Chatterjee said, “Barack Obama’s verification badge says he’s either a legacy account or a paid subscriber, same as that of a white nationalist, far right troll handle’s – making the whole exercise of the blue tick pointless.” According to her more than a blue tick, what users - especially women and gender minorities - need most is protection from mass troll attacks, doxxing and threats.

Jaishree Kumar, a freelance journalist, also felt that Twitter Blue will give way to trolls and impersonation on the platform. “Blue ticks have been a mark of authenticity as we have known it all along, but now it holds no value as anyone can buy it against a price,” she said.

Kumar, who got legacy verified in 2019, said that the badge did help in its own way in her profession. “As a freelance journalist, we have a real task convincing people that we are as much a real journalist as others. So when I pitched stories to editors and plugged in my Twitter handle along with it, the blue tick made them take me seriously.”

Flagging a deep concern for journalists, Kumar said, “Women journalists are, as it is, targeted for just doing their jobs. One of my journalist friends was impersonated on Twitter by some bad actor which led to the blocking of her original account. So now there is an impersonator with a blue tick active on Twitter.”

With no plans for paying for the blue tick now, Kumar feels that the whole subscription model has rendered credibility on Twitter nothing more than a joke.