Twitter Blue Tick Cull – The Pope, JK Rowling and Ant and Dec Among Hundreds of Thousands Losing Verification | Science and technology news

Twitter has finally started removing “old” blue ticks from verified accounts, with some of the world’s most famous personalities losing the verification mark.

The Pope, author JK Rowling, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, US rapper Jay-Z and TV stars Ant and Dec have all lost their blue ticks on the social networking site, as have the Conservatives and Labor parties.

Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue tick system, many of them athletes, musicians, journalists and other public figures.

The only blue ticks left will be those with a Twitter Blue subscriptionwhich costs up to £11 a month in the UK, or for those associated with the company.

But unlike the “old” blue ticks that were introduced shortly after Twitter’s launch to help people know which accounts were legitimate, the platform will no longer verify accounts to make sure they were the are who they say they are.

Accounts with ticks of a different color keep them – Gold indicates it is a verified company, while gray means it is a government, multilateral organization or official.

It brings the curtain to one of the most controversial elements of musk‘s administration of Twitter since his $44bn (£38bn) takeover last October.

One of his first big decisions was to allow users to pay for a tick, Explain “power to the people”.but the move backfired and flooded the platform with accounts impersonate brands, celebrities and politicians.

One, pretending to be former US President George W. Bush, tweeted “I miss killing Iraqis,” while another, disguised as Nintendo’s official account, posted a picture of Super Mario making a rude gesture .

Twitter then suspended the introduction of paid ticksintroduced different colored ticks to distinguish between governments, corporations and individuals, and Twitter Blue relaunched a month later.

In a final controversy before setting a date for their removal Twitter made the old verified ticks indistinguishable from those who paid for one.