Several Indian celebrities and political figures have lost their Twitter verification marks after the platform started removing the legacy blue tick of users who have not subscribed to the paid service. Bollywood celebrities including Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Alia Bhatt have list the Twitter blue ticks. Cricketers Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma are among the sports figures who lost the blue ticks.
Politicians who lost the verification marks include Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal among others. Globally, the list includes Pope Francis, former US president Donald Trump, Beyonce, Selena Gomez, Cristiano Ronaldo and more. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system, according to reports.
As per the new Twitter Blue policy, only users who pay can keep the verified credential. The costs of keeping the marks range from USD 8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of USD 1,000 monthly to verify an organisation, plus USD 50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account.
Many government agencies, nonprofits and public-service accounts around the world found themselves no longer verified, raising concerns that Twitter could lose its status as a platform for getting accurate, up-to-date information from authentic sources, including in emergencies.
Twitter first introduced verified accounts in 2009 to help users identify that celebrities, politicians, companies and brands, news organisations and other accounts "of public interest" were genuine and not impostor accounts. In an attempt to boost dwindling revenues, Musk rolled out his new verification system in October shortly after acquiring the microblogging platform. However, the initial roll-out was a disaster and had to be paused after fake and parody accounts seized blue ticks. In December, Twitter brought back the service, along with gold and grey checkmarks for businesses and government accounts.
