Twitter seems to have officially killed off its old blue ticks, one of the last remaining vestiges of the era of pre-Elon Musk owners.
The old blue checks, which Twitter handed out for free to journalists, celebrities and other government officials to combat impersonation and spam, should end on April 1.
Musk took to Twitter on April 11 — days after the old ticks should have gone — to push the end date to April 20 or April 20. Yes, that’s the day people honor weed because Twitter is now owned by a high school student.
With the obsolete checkmarks gone, Twitter only has verification tokens for paid users and businesses, as well as government agencies and officials. Now if a user sees a blue checkmark and clicks on it, the label will read, “This account has been verified because they subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”
Some users, including AapkaDost reporters, experienced a “flickering” blue check mark on their profiles on Thursday. Others have seen their blue ticks disappear altogether.
Under Musk’s reign, Twitter has not kept its promise to remove the obsolete checkmarks from even the highest profiles. Even Pope Francis couldn’t escape the big ticking off of 4/20.