Twitter is a powerful tool for amplifying your voice and sharing your message with the world.   – Evan Williams

1^st April – the dumbest day on the internet is now not just about getting pranked on buying hot, iced coffee from your favorite brands. On April 1, Twitter – the Elon Musk-led social network was expected to formally remove the legacy verification checkmarks. While these plans seem to be on the clasp for now, Twitter has now revised the label associated with the checkmark to make it practically possible to differentiate between individuals who have earned the checkmark or have paid for it.

Upon clicking on the blue checkmark, the verified label now reads, “This account is verified because it’s a legacy verified account or is subscribed to Twitter Blue.”

After introducing the verification through the blue subscription plan, the legacy verified account read, “This account is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.” On the contrary, the label on the blue account showed, “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.”

With this feature, it was easier to differentiate between two different sets of verified accounts. However, this new update has now made it harder to separate the two different verifications and identify them.

With this drastic update, the New York Times also lost its verified check since it refused to pay for the verification. Social media users all around the platform started posting memes about the publication, not getting verified, on which the CEO of the social media network said, “Oh ok, we’ll take it off then.”

Not just the publications, but with the passing days, several celebrities, including Patrick Mahomes II, Darius Slay, Monica Lewinsky and William Shatner, also lay claimed that they won’t pay for the verification services.

The reporter, Matt Binder, also claimed that Musk quickly deleted a tweet stating that Twitter will give their users a few grace weeks to subscribe to Twitter Blue before removing their verification marks. The tweet that was later deleted also mentioned that the leading social network – Twitter, would remove all the checkmarks if the accounts specifically refused to pay for Twitter Blue.

According to a credible news source, a former employee at Twitter’s verification team said, “As a team, our sole goal was to protect users from the harm caused by the real world, but this update screams the complete opposite!” The other former workers added, “The verified users across the platform will use their presence on the platform to influence anything ranging from misinformation to harm. This update is a silent threat that no one is foreseeing.

When Elon Musk took over the leading social media network, Twitter, his sole focus was to bring back free speech and eliminate the money-making factor. However, the latest Twitter policy feels really different to what he had ambitioned about.

There are two algorithms on Twitter – the stream of tweets from the people you follow and the stream of recommended tweets. The latest update in the policy will now debar the non-paying users from taking part in these streams. This actually means that all those users who didn’t pay for the verification services will be less likely to get their tweets liked or retweeted.

Twitter blue had a chaotic initial launch back in November, and with this update, the people across the platform started imitating big brands and celebrities in order to make them look authentic. This enabled Twitter to temporarily pause the feature; however, it was again relaunched in the following month.

Ever since then, Twitter Blue has been used by several controversial groups, including Taliban officials and their supporters in Afghanistan. Combined with Elon Musk’s take on misinformation check, this update can be an extremely threatening moment for Twitter. This feature also raises a phenomenological question on the origin of Twitter since it was supposed to be a meritocratic platform – that encourages tweets with quality.

With the following updates, it has become quite obvious that Twitter is now going to lose a lot of its users – those who believe in the rise of quality content. But, Musk doesn’t seem worried about that.

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