If you got your blue Twitter verification check the old fashioned way, you know, by not paying for it– then I have bad news for you. The CEO of Tesla turned CEO of Twitter reiterated today that the old blue checkmarks on the platform will be removed from the verified hands of users on April 1… or are they?
Twitter Verified tweeted yesterday, “On April 1, we will begin phasing out our legacy verified program and removing obsolete verified checkmarks.” The official account also redirected individuals to Twitter Blue’s login page and organizations to the platform’s Verified Organizations page.
When asked to comment on the disappearance of the obsolete checkmarks, Twitter told Gizmodo “💩.”
This all begs the question: why the hell would Twitter make such a massive policy change in a day built on joking and being wildly unserious? Probably because it’s a win/win for Mr. Musk. The announcement of deprecated ticks yesterday gives Musk plenty of time to gauge public opinion on the matter before April 1. If there’s enough outrage, Twitter may claim that this was all just a prank for April Fool’s Day, but Musk also has a notoriously awful sense of humorso this could be a sick chance for him to pwn the h8rs.
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You can imagine Musk fired off an emoji-laden tweet mocking all the elite owners of old ticks for thinking they would lose their prized status symbols. But it wouldn’t be a very good April Fools’ Day joke since he has said this move has been going on for months and presumably will come someday. Just lying about the date is pretty lame.
Brands regularly use April 1st to gain attention with little lies that are vaguely humorous, like 7/11 claiming it was a new launch.Small sips.” Some people fall for it, some don’t, but it’s all mostly harmless. Telling people that they will have to pay a monthly fee because they will soon lose their method of protecting themselves against impersonation would be a different story altogether.
One thing worth pointing out is that Twitter’s April Fools contribution in 2022 came in the form of a tweet stating “we are working on an edit button.” Everyone laughed, but that edit button rolled out in October. So maybe Twitter is just built differently and April 1st is truth telling day.
Either way, it comes at a time when Twitter Blue is reportedly not doing very well, both financially and in the public eye. Twitter Blue has been Twitter’s laughing stock ever since people could pay for authentication, because why on earth would anyone pay money for a basic security feature?
Well, it seems Twitter knows that Twitter Blue is becoming a bit of a farce. Code tracker Alessandro Paluzzi recently discovered that the platform is experimenting with granting users the ability to hide the blue check that they pay $8 a month to rent. Likewise, TechCrunch reported that Twitter Blue subscriptions only raked in about $11 million for Twitter on mobile in the first three months since the service’s relaunch.
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