Twitter's blue tick free service comes to end

Prominent personalities around globe have their ‘verified badge' removed for lack of subscription

ISLAMABAD:

Several renowned personalities, including politicians, show biz celebrities, journalists and other prominent figures in their fields of profession, on Friday lost their blue ticks on social media platform Twitter, which had imposed a fee for the feature that signified that the account was verified.

In Pakistan, the prominent individuals, who lost their blue ticks on Twitter, include PTI chairman Imran Khan, PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.

The PTI chief lost his blue tick despite having over 19 million followers.

However, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif retained his status with a grey check, which was for accounts that were linked to government organisations.

The Pakistani celebrities, who lost their blue tick, include Mahira Khan, Fahad Mustafa, Hamza Ali Abbasi, Asim Azhar, Humayun Saeed, Mawra Hocane, and Mehwish Hayat.

The accounts of prominent news outlets in the country also lost the blue tick.

Internationally, the Pope, former US president Donald Trump and singer Justin Bieber as well as reporters affiliated with AFP were deprived of their blue ticks as well.

Even software giant Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates; Indian celebrities Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan; Hollywood star Selena Gomez; American media personality Kim Kardashian; former Indian cricket star Virat Kohli; and star footballer Cristiano Ronaldo were not Ronaldo spared.

In November last year, Twitter boss Elon Musk announced that the platform would charge $8 a month for its Blue service, which includes its sought-after "verified" badge as he sought to boost subscriptions and make the social media network less reliant on ads.

In a tweet, he vowed to rid the platform of the ”current lords and peasants system".

He added that the price would be adjusted by “country proportionate to purchasing power parity”.

An analysis by independent researcher Travis Brown suggested that only about 4.4% of Twitter’s legacy verified accounts had subscribed to Twitter Blue so far. As the policy continues to roll out, it is likely that the verified status for many will change, depending on their decision to subscribe to Twitter Blue.

Some celebrities still had the blue tick, despite not signing up for it.

Musk said in response to a news article about those check marks that he was “paying for a few personally”.

In response to another tweet, he said it was only for Star Trek’s William Shatner, basketball superstar LeBron James and author Stephen King.

US Senator Brian Schatz objected to the possible effect on public confidence in the event of disasters.

“There really ought to be a way for emergency managers to verify that they are real on this website or imposters will cause suffering and death,” he tweeted.

“I am not complaining about my own check mark, I just think during natural disasters it’s essential to know that FEMA is actually FEMA,” he wrote, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that steps in after hurricanes and deadly storms.

(With input from agencies)