Verified old Twitter ticks are now indistinguishable from Twitter Blue subscribers — and people aren’t happy | Science and technology news

Many Twitter users are upset and confused because the social media platform can no longer tell who paid for their blue tick.

Last month, Twitter announced it would be removing old verified ticks and ending its old verified program in favor of charging for a coveted blue tick.

For users who wanted to keep their tick the Elon Musk-own company advised them to subscribe to Twitter Blue – which costs $8 (£6.51) per month for single web users.

Musk tweeted back in February, “Twitter’s Blue Verified legacy is unfortunately deeply corrupted, as is the sunset in a few months.”

The change was supposed to go into effect on April 1st, but old verified users noticed that their ticks are still intact.

While some questioned if Musk was playing an April Fool’s joke, it was later discovered that Twitter had changed the description of old verified accounts.

Now when users click a blue tick, the new description reads, “This account is verified because it subscribed to Twitter Blue or is an old verified account” — lumping old verified accounts with Twitter Blue subscribers.

Previously, it said, “This is an old verified account. It may or may not be remarkable.”

As a result, it is now impossible to tell the difference between people who were verified prior to the implementation of the legacy verification program and those who chose to be blue ticked.

The New York Times is unchecked

While many of Twitter’s high-profile users brace themselves for losing the blue ticks that helped verify them on the social media platform and distinguish them from scammers, Musk has taken liberty, particularly from a news organization to remove.

The New York Times has had its verification tick removed from its main account, with the publication being one of Musk’s most despised news publications.

It comes after the newspaper claimed in a story Thursday it would not pay Twitter to verify its institutional accounts.

The Twitter CEO tweeted early Sunday that the Times would be unticked before posting derogatory remarks about the paper.

Other Times accounts such as the business news and opinion pages still had either blue or gold ticks as of Sunday, as did several reporters from the news organization.

“We do not intend to pay the monthly tick status fee for our institutional Twitter accounts,” the Times said in a statement Sunday.

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“We will also not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue’s personal accounts, except in rare instances where that status would be essential for reporting purposes.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press, which has also said it will not pay for the ticks, still had them in its accounts as of Sunday noon.

“Stop this mess”

Many obsolete verified Twitter users have expressed anger at the idea of ​​being mistaken for a Twitter Blue subscriber.

One person tweeted: “This is misleading b******. I am NOT subscribed to Twitter Blue and have no intention of doing so. I have an old verified account.

Another wrote: “Elon trying to protect the Twitter Blue folks from ridicule by making old verified accounts ambiguous instead of removing the blue tick? What on earth is that @TwitterBlue? I didn’t pay for the blue tick.”

While a third suggested that deleting old blue ticks en masse was too complex for Musk, he wrote: “Okay, so he figured disabling legacy checks was too difficult (and embarrassing) and now has.” he just changed the description of all legacy verified people suggesting we might pay for twitter blue… That’s a new world record by Not Mad.”

And YouTuber Eddy Buback seemed mortified at the thought of being mistaken for a Twitter Blue subscriber, writing: “Oh god this is a lot worse than unticking. I didn’t pay Elon. I would rather die.”