Elon Musk has fulfilled his promise that Twitter was going to “treat everyone equally” and has removed the blue verification mark from all those profiles of this social network that had inherited it from the stage before Musk bought it. With a deadline of April 20, all those who have not subscribed to Twitter Blue, the premium version, at a rate of eight dollars a month, have lost it.
Twitter Blue offers its subscribers greater visibility of their content, fewer ads and other advantages, such as the possibility of writing longer messages, up to 10,000 characters, uploading longer and higher quality videos, as well as being able to edit messages up to five times for 30 minutes.
Until March, only 0.2% of users paid for the subscription, but also during the last month alone Twitter Blue received 116,000 subscriptions, 138% more than in February.
Users were notified by email of their downgrade and among the victims are personalities such as Pope Francis, Beyoncé or Donald Trump. As a curiosity, Musk himself has explained that he pays out of pocket for the subscription of the actor William Shatner, the NBA player Lebron James and the writer Stephen King. These last two had announced their intention not to subscribe, and James expressed, yesterday morning, his surprise that his profile still maintained the verification mark.
This mark was one of the methods by which Twitter exercised content moderation, as it ensured that the profile really corresponded to who it claimed to be and therefore prevented identity theft within the social network.
In this sense, and in the face of complaints from many users, Musk announced his commitment to continue fighting against bots and the creation of a “moderation council”.
But this has not been the only surprise with which Twitter users woke up yesterday. It was not announced, but the companies that have not gone through the checkout have not only seen the signal that verified their identity disappear, but -as Musk himself has explained- from now on to be able to recover it and carry out advertising campaigns they must pay the eight dollars or invest in advertising on Twitter at least 1,000 dollars per month.
And there are still more. Following complaints from some public media outlets – including the BBC – that a message labeling them as government-funded media outlets appeared on their profiles and that this could affect their credibility, Twitter has withdrawn it. This has sparked new criticism, since from now on it will not be possible to know when a Russian or Chinese outlet –considered regular sources of fake news– is paid for with public money.
But all this has ended up having a price –something more than eight dollars, of course– for Elon Musk himself. After the controversy on Twitter, the collapse of Tesla’s shares on the stock market, after the poor results of the car manufacturer and the explosion, on Thursday, in mid-flight of the Starship rocket -manufactured by its aerospace company SpaceX-, when it failed five Of his thirty-three engines, the South African millionaire has ceased to be the richest person in the world, a position that has once again been occupied by the Frenchman Bernard Arnault, the owner of the Louis Vuitton empire.
