Well, at Least Elon Musk Has Realized He Accidentally Created a Badge of Shame
In 2022, when Elon Musk campaigned to buy Twitter—before he realized he would be massively overpaying and went to court to get out of the deal he himself proposed, before he admitted defeat and took over the company in a $44 billion leveraged buyout—he promised to restore "free speech" to the site. He vowed to right the wrongs of a dual-class system that had benefited the haves at the expense of the have-nots—and he homed in on the blue check marks slapped on verified accounts as the culprit enabling this disparity. On his first day as owner of the site, Musk tweeted, "Twitter's current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! [Twitter] Blue for $8/month." Lords and peasants! 1/1 Skip Ad Continue watchingafter the adVisit Advertiser websiteGO TO PAGE PLAYTop Stories 01:12 Video Settings Full Screen About ConnatixV461608The NY Judge in the Stormy Daniels Case Is NotInterested in Donald Trump's Delay Tactics So, a year ago, Elon Musk took blue check marks away from anyone who refused to pay him money. This week, he started giving them back for free. While Musk wanted to frame the removal of blue check marks as some great anti-elite democratization, some Robin Hood–esque pursuit of justice, in reality it was always a money-making proposition. If Musk could make more money directly from users in the form of recurring subscription revenue, he'd reduce the company's dependence on advertisers and their demands about what merits acceptable content on the site. (Musk's laissez faire approach to content moderation has always been at odds with advertiser demands for a so-called brand-safe environment to place their ads.) Advertisement The main selling point for X's subscription product—once called Twitter Blue, and now called X Premium—quickly became the blue check mark, though Musk has added features and benefits to the offering in the year and a half since. Suddenly, Musk's favorite right-wing trolls and Tesla-to-the-moon fan accounts were all equipped with blue check marks, seeming more important and legitimate upon a quick glance. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But Musk fumbled his own plot. That became clear back in April 2023, once he removed blue check marks from people who used to have them. For years, Twitter gave blue verification badges to a wide variety of important people. It was used chiefly to verify the identities of rich, famous, and powerful people like Beyoncé Knowles or Barack Obama. That was important. Not only do people need access to the president's tweets—let alone those of the queen of pop—but verifying these accounts helped everyone by reducing confusion and scams. But Twitter eventually began identifying journalists, academics, and other people who could be repositories of reliable information. (Yes, myself included.) Advertisement Since X is often used as an up-to-the-minute news aggregator—and an internet hub for journalists—these blue check marks gave the site's users a shortcut to quickly deem whether some piece of information was from a reputable or unreputable source. (Obviously, exceptions abound.) In other words, the blue check marks aren't just a status symbol, but an important feature of a popular news site. According to Pew Research Center, more than half (53 percent) of X users still rely on it for news. What Musk never understood, or appreciated, was that the check marks helped Twitter as much as they helped the badge-holders. Advertisement Instead, Musk glommed onto the right-wing habit of using "blue check" as a derogatory moniker for elites. By abolishing the blue checks, Musk's maneuver was a pronouncement that a new regime had taken power. Advertisement But naturally, once any single person could simply buy a blue check mark and appear legitimate for eight bucks a month, chaos ensued. It seemed like just about every corporate account was being impersonated. One fake account pretending to be the pharma giant Eli Lilly tweeted out, "We are excited to announce insulin is free now," a tweet that caused mass confusion and led the stock to drop 4 percent. (Eli Lilly did slash the price of two of its most commonly prescribed insulin drugs mere months later, perhaps somewhat in response to the incident on X.) Advertisement Letting people buy blue check marks never made sense, but Musk erred in removing what he called "legacy" check marks—the ones that people didn't pay him for. Advertisement
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Read More What the billionaire owner was too dense to realize was that the value of selling a blue check mark was mostly in blending in, appearing legitimate, and feigning importance. Removing all of the important people (celebrities) and pseudo-important people (me) simply turned the blue check mark into a blue badge of shame. By August 2023, Musk started figuring out that he'd messed up and added a feature to let people pay $8 but hide their check mark. He also gradually began giving the most famous celebrities their check marks back even if—like Stephen King—they didn't want them. Advertisement Advertisement
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This week, however, X began alerting many of the less famous but still popular accounts that had their blue check marks removed that they'd be eligible for a free subscription to X Premium—and thus the reinstatement of their blue badge. "Going forward, all X accounts with over 2500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5000 will get Premium+ for free," Musk tweeted on March 27. Advertisement Across X, many accounts that were regifted the blue badge tweeted to clarify that they did not, in fact, stoop to being so lame as to pay for a blue check mark. "My blue check is back and I just want to make clear I am not paying El*n M*sk for this thanks very much," Wired writer Lauren Goode tweeted. "Just to be clear, I did not pay for verification," film producer Franklin Leonard wrote. "It's like a mole grew back," wrote New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum. You're wondering about me? How nice of you. Apparently, I'm still blue check–less, so—for now—I'm in the clear. Good riddance.
Top Stories 01:12 Video Settings Full Screen About ConnatixV461608
The NY Judge in the Stormy Daniels Case Is NotInterested in Donald Trump's Delay Tactics
So, a year ago, Elon Musk took blue check marks away from anyone who refused to pay him money. This week, he started giving them back for free. While Musk wanted to frame the removal of blue check marks as some great anti-elite democratization, some Robin Hood–esque pursuit of justice, in reality it was always a money-making proposition. If Musk could make more money directly from users in the form of recurring subscription revenue, he'd reduce the company's dependence on advertisers and their demands about what merits acceptable content on the site. (Musk's laissez faire approach to content moderation has always been at odds with advertiser demands for a so-called brand-safe environment to place their ads.) Advertisement The main selling point for X's subscription product—once called Twitter Blue, and now called X Premium—quickly became the blue check mark, though Musk has added features and benefits to the offering in the year and a half since. Suddenly, Musk's favorite right-wing trolls and Tesla-to-the-moon fan accounts were all equipped with blue check marks, seeming more important and legitimate upon a quick glance. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But Musk fumbled his own plot. That became clear back in April 2023, once he removed blue check marks from people who used to have them. For years, Twitter gave blue verification badges to a wide variety of important people. It was used chiefly to verify the identities of rich, famous, and powerful people like Beyoncé Knowles or Barack Obama. That was important. Not only do people need access to the president's tweets—let alone those of the queen of pop—but verifying these accounts helped everyone by reducing confusion and scams. But Twitter eventually began identifying journalists, academics, and other people who could be repositories of reliable information. (Yes, myself included.) Advertisement Since X is often used as an up-to-the-minute news aggregator—and an internet hub for journalists—these blue check marks gave the site's users a shortcut to quickly deem whether some piece of information was from a reputable or unreputable source. (Obviously, exceptions abound.) In other words, the blue check marks aren't just a status symbol, but an important feature of a popular news site. According to Pew Research Center, more than half (53 percent) of X users still rely on it for news. What Musk never understood, or appreciated, was that the check marks helped Twitter as much as they helped the badge-holders. Advertisement Instead, Musk glommed onto the right-wing habit of using "blue check" as a derogatory moniker for elites. By abolishing the blue checks, Musk's maneuver was a pronouncement that a new regime had taken power. Advertisement But naturally, once any single person could simply buy a blue check mark and appear legitimate for eight bucks a month, chaos ensued. It seemed like just about every corporate account was being impersonated. One fake account pretending to be the pharma giant Eli Lilly tweeted out, "We are excited to announce insulin is free now," a tweet that caused mass confusion and led the stock to drop 4 percent. (Eli Lilly did slash the price of two of its most commonly prescribed insulin drugs mere months later, perhaps somewhat in response to the incident on X.) Advertisement Letting people buy blue check marks never made sense, but Musk erred in removing what he called "legacy" check marks—the ones that people didn't pay him for. Advertisement 
