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When Elon Musk brought back the blue check mark to some X accounts for free this week, users balked.
The owner of X, formerly Twitter, announced last week that accounts with a certain number of verified followers would start getting Premium and Premium+ features for free, including a blue check mark. But when X rolled out those free memberships, some users were annoyed that the blue ticks had been involuntarily conferred upon them.
Actor Mark Hamill pleaded with his 5 million followers not to judge him for it, while political commentator Elie Mystal called the blue check “the mark of the beast.”
The aversion shows how drastically Musk has managed to strip one of Twitter’s most useful tools of its value (and status). Before he took over the company, the blue check mark helped users identify legitimate news sources, government accounts and public figures. But Musk criticized the verification system and restored what he called “power to the people” through an $8 monthly subscription.In doing so, Musk did away with one of the platform’s most valuable features and replaced it with a system whereby users essentially pay money for the site to boost their posts.
Thanks to Musk, the blue check mark now carries a weird stigma, with an implication that the person behind such an account is willing to fork over money to be granted an imaginary online status. That’s no longer the case, given the free memberships Musk is now doling out, but that probably won’t make it any less embarrassing.