It is April 3 and your Twitter Blue Tick is still around cos Elon Musk has a strange plan

It's sheer chaos at Twitter once again. And once again, verified blue ticks are at the centre of the storm. Twitter's legacy blue checks (users who were verified without charge during the pre-Elon Musk era), were supposed to be taken down starting April 1, 2023. But two days later, many of the legacy blue checks remain. 

So, was it an April fool's prank? 

No, not exactly. 

• In a now-deleted tweet, Elon Musk said that legacy blue accounts will be given a few more weeks to subscribe. That is unless they say outright that they won't be subscribing to Twitter Blue. 

Elon Musk quickly deleted a tweet saying legacy verified accounts would not lose their checkmarks on April 1 as he previously said, won’t happen for another “few weeks”

however, if they specifically say they won’t pay for Twitter Blue, then Twitter will remove their checkmark pic.twitter.com/HiiWwf30tb

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) April 2, 2023

• A Twitter user told Elon Musk on Twitter through a meme that The New York Times said they won't be paying for Twitter Blue. 

Oh ok, we’ll take it off then

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023

• This resulted in The New York Times losing its verification badge.

• The entire exercise seems to be a petty one on Elon Musk's side as he goes on to rant about the media publication saying how their "propaganda" isn't even that interesting. 

The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023

• However, The New York Times isn't the only media house to have publicly said they won't be subscribing to Twitter Blue. 
• Buzzfeed News reported that major American media outlets like The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times also said they won't be subscribing.
• As of publishing this article, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times verification badges remain intact. 
• Many of these media outlets also reportedly said that they won't be reimbursing employees for subscribing to Twitter Blue on their personal accounts unless it is required for reporting. 

Something's changed:

• There is a small change to the verification ticks on Twitter, something that will take a few clicks to know. 
• Earlier, clicking on blue verified ticks would show whether the accounts were legacy blue ticks or were subscribed to Twitter Blue. 
• It offered one way to ensure Twitter accounts were actually notable or belonged to the person or organisation they were claiming to be. 

"this person is either the real Taylor Swift or someone who has $8 there's no way to be certain" pic.twitter.com/EcrQ08YkFA

— Rob DenBleyker (@RobDenBleyker) April 2, 2023

• However, now Twitter has changed the description of the blue ticks on the front end. All blue ticks, legacy blue or subscribed blue now say, 

• Critics on Twitter have pointed out that it seems to be a way to avoid embarrassment for Elon Musk, as suddenly there won't be any more Twitter Blue subscribers despite his deadline.  

if you want proof that paid Twitter Blue subscriptions are not going well, this is it:

Twitter changed the blue checkmark badge to be indistinguishable from paid and legacy verified accounts on the frontend pic.twitter.com/ZXmjP2AhJQ

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) April 2, 2023

But why do you still have that legacy blue tick? 

Well, according to The Washington Post, much of the removal process is manual. Like this meme describes.

he’s fucked it. he thought all the legacy users would buy blue ticks in a panic but they didn’t. he told his programmers “they’ll all sub by April 1st, you’ll only have like 3 check marks to delete”. he’s sitting on his plastic throne incredulous that people won’t *buy* status https://t.co/VlreV6b1y8

— Smooth Dunk (@SmoothDunk) April 2, 2023 

So, it may take a while for Musk and the team to actually remove all the non-paying verified accounts.

Twitter Blue melting all over again:

• As chaos engulfed Twitter over the blue ticks for the second time since Elon Musk's takeover, parody accounts with paid blue ticks once again rose to the occasion.

sweetest ending to the end of the legacy blue check era <3 pic.twitter.com/9NepzWwTQQ

— Annie Wu (all socials: @annie_wu_22) (@Annie_Wu_22) April 1, 2023

• Critics have pointed out that Musk's Twitter Blue subscription is flawed as it makes it difficult to identify notable accounts.
• The blue tick mark was a universal symbol on social media to identify legitimate accounts of celebrities, organisations, etc. However, with everyone buying a blue tick, it's become difficult to verify which account is legitimate. 
• When Twitter Blue was first introduced, organisations such as Eli Lilly had a bloodbath on the stock market as a parody blue tick account with the name Eli Lilly went on Twitter announcing insulin was free. 

[ALSO READ: Meta following Twitter into the Paid Verification Madverse will make the blue tick useless]

• Now, there are different types of verified tick marks - from blue, yellow, or gold to grey - each with its own specifications. 
• Organisations have to pay $1000 or nearly Rs 83,000 per month for verification. 
• However, Elon Musk is reportedly giving away free verification badges to 10,000 organisations that are top sponsors on the platform. 

In other Twitter-related news, Elon Musk has kept his promise of making the platform's source code public or at least some parts of the source code public. This has been done so that developers the world over can point out mistakes in the code or help make Twitter better. Much of the source code pertains to tweet recommendations. 

Twitter recommendation source code now available to all on GitHub https://t.co/9ozsyZANwa

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2023

It also comes just days after Twitter made GitHub remove a leaked source code of Twitter, which exposed far more than the voluntary reveal. Reportedly, the source code was leaked several months ago, making the platform vulnerable to hackers. 

[ALSO READ: Looks like Elon Musk wants Twitter staff to buy company stocks despite low value]