Elon Musk is making Twitter great again, says Taliban leader

Twitter verified check marks bought by Taliban appear to have been removed

Everyone on Twitter is trying to stay relevant and the Afghan Taliban are no different.

The head of the Taliban’s department for “access to information”, Hedayatullah Hedayat, and its top media watchdog, Abdul Haq Hammad, each had blue ticks on their accounts as of Monday.

Both of their accounts have 187,000 and 170,000 followers each. Hedayat’s – which regularly publishes information about Taliban administration matters – had previously got its tick back after it was first removed in December.

Muhammad Jalal, a Taliban official, even praised Musk for the verifications and for “making Twitter great again.”

Thank you @elonmusk for buying twitter. Elon Musk in making twitter great again.

— Muhammad Jalal (@MJalal700) January 16, 2023

However, the account verifications bought by the Taliban appear to have been removed, after many expressed outrage that the social media platform had given its blue check marks to Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers.

Twitter previously only gave blue “verified” check marks to accounts that were considered “active, notable and authentic accounts of public interest”. But since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, users can buy them from the Twitter Blue service for a fee – an option at least two officials of the Taliban government in Afghanistan had exercised.

The accounts of Hedayat and Hammad no longer carried the blue check marks. It was not clear whether Twitter or the users themselves removed the verifications.

Neither Twitter nor Musk, who uses the service prolifically, has so far responded publicly on the situation.