On Thursday, Twitter eliminated the traditional ‘blue tick’ verification badge for users who have not signed up for the platform’s paid service, which costs roughly â¹650 per month on the web and â¹900 on the mobile app in India. After the introduction of the subscription, a considerable number of prominent personalities in India, including several famous celebrities and the majority of chief ministers, have had their blue marks removed. 

Some noteworthy individuals who have lost their verification badges include Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi. Moreover, Twitter’s new subscription-based verification policy has resulted in the loss of verified status for other political figures like Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi from Congress. 

Verification badges of political parties’ official Twitter handles, including those of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and Congress, were also lost. Twitter has undergone substantial changes in its approach to verifying users with the highly sought-after blue checkmarks since being taken over by Elon Musk. Previously, these badges were awarded to prominent individuals, journalists, executives, politicians, and organisations following identity verification, serving as a symbol of their legitimacy.  

Musk has introduced fresh regulations to encourage users to opt for the paid features of the platform, which he considers crucial for Twitter’s potential revenue expansion. Last month, Musk tweeted about a 50% decline in advertising revenue from October to March, underlining the necessity for alternative revenue streams. Twitter has extended the deadline to Thursday for verified users to decide on whether they want to pay for service after initially announcing plans to remove old verification badges. 

As per the news agency, currently, only a minor proportion of Twitter users, roughly around 1 per cent, have opted for the subscription service known as ‘Twitter Blue’. On the other hand, users who retained a blue checkmark were shown a pop-up message stating that their account had been verified due to their subscription to Twitter Blue and confirmation of their phone number. Interesting to note that Pope Francis, former US president Donald Trump, and Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates were among those who had their verification badges revoked.