Friday, May 17

Elon Musk’s X Surprises Users With Free Blue Ticks

Edited by Akhil Thomas
Elon Musk's X Surprises Users With Free Blue Ticks

On April 4, some X users were shocked and surprised as they received free blue ticks for their accounts. The highlight is that the X users got the verified checkmarks without asking for it. However, only users with more than 2,500 verified followers received the premium features for free this time.

Twitter first unveiled the blue check mark system in 2009. In 2023, billionaire Elon Musk took away the check marks from the X profiles of users who used to get them for free. Celebrities including Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, and Alia Bhatt had lost their verified blue ticks from their official X accounts. The micro-blogging platform, formerly Twitter, used to provide blue tick verification badges to prominent accounts, including those of celebrities, politicians, and journalists.

However, Elon Musk wanted to get rid of this system. As per reports, the platform had over 4 lakh legacy verified users on that occasion. Elon Musk had also accused the old Blue Tick system of creating two classes of X users. Thus, the billionaire unveiled a badge that is given to users who are willing to pay a monthly fee to the platform. X offered blue ticks as part of an $8-a-month premium service.

At the same time, users were now reportedly annoyed that the blue ticks had been involuntarily conferred upon them. Recently, Elon Musk announced the comeback of blue ticks. “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,” wrote the tech leader on his X handle on March 28.

Verification badges of notable personalities were reinstated after the new update. “Blue tick back. That means I can write one of those incredibly long tweets. But please if I do, shoot me,” comedian David Baddiel wrote on his X handle after receiving the blue tick.