Is the blue tick on Twitter still worth anything?

The blue tick on Twitter is under lock and key. In other words, behind the paywall system. You can only get it if you subscribe to Twitter Blue. A check mark is included in this subscription, which raises the question if anything will be checked.

blue badge

Is the blue tick on Twitter now just a badge for those who want to show they’re willing to pay $8 a month to a social mediator? It seems so. Certainly looking at the way Twitter is promoting it: “Power to the people: Your account will now get a blue check, just like the celebrities, corporations and politicians you already follow.” It is no longer described as a pleasant thing for users to be able to determine if they are dealing with a real account or a fake one. It’s a way to be “just like a celebrity”.

This issue is not yet an issue in the Netherlands: at the moment, the Twitter Blue subscription is only available in English-speaking countries, such as the United States and Australia. Although this does mean that you need to be extra careful when you go to Twitter: an account by the name of Elon Musk with a blue checkmark might have a completely different handle (the name shown below). After all, anyone with a fake account in those countries where Twitter Blue is located can get a blue tick.

Verification check mark

It’s not just a problem because obviously nothing has been checked: it’s now hard to pretend to be someone else: people are more likely to believe you because there’s a check mark next to it. It used to be an icon that you could think of, hey, it’s really the President of the United States tweeting this. Now you no longer have any idea: the check mark is simply for sale.

In the Twitter app on iOS, people with a Blue subscription can already purchase the tag. The advantage is that the tick is cheaper than initially thought: so it can cost $20. The downside is that you don’t have blue everywhere yet, so you see big differences in the world and people might not know that the “fairness” of the check mark is completely lost now.

Twitter Blue Benefits

If you have a Blue subscription, you have more benefits. For example, those tweets appear in order before the tweets of people who don’t pay $8 per month to the social mediator. Musk describes it as an important step against spam and scams, which seems really strange in the context of how to get the check mark. You’ll still see ads with the subscription, but less. You can also add longer videos to your Tweet.

There were 423,000 accounts with a checkmark and the question is how that will change now that it’s an addition to a Twitter subscription. Anyway, it means that in a few months you won’t be able to tick if you don’t have a Blue account. It is still unknown when exactly this will end, but it will take months, not a year.

We’re curious about how Musk puts it all together, especially given the way he treats the people who have to do the work. Thousands of people were fired from the company this week.