The rise and fall of Twitter’s blue tick

This story was originally published on Passionfruit.

Analysis

According to Twitter CEO Elon Musk, legacy verified accounts will be a thing of the past come April 2023. “Blue ticks” in their current form will remain, but only for those who subscribed to Twitter Blue. But with Twitter Blue’s ID-based vetting process being non-existent, the loss of genuine, identity-verified legacy blue ticks means that we’ll be ushering in a new, more dangerous era of Twitter rife with misinformation and impersonation.

Since he took over Twitter late last year, Elon Musk has been wrong about, well, pretty much everything. It’s gotten to a point where the extent to which he’s been wrong about stuff is genuinely hilarious—as demonstrated by Elon’s claim, sent to Twitter employees, that the company is currently only worth less than half what he paid for it.

But there’s one thing which, at least partially, he was right about. Back in the Before Musk era, Twitter blue ticks were, in part, a status symbol. Was it weird to consider blue ticks a status symbol? Yes. A bit pathetic? Most definitely.

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