Elon Musk-owned Twitter started the process of removing legacy blue checkmarks from user profiles on Thursday. As soon as the exercise started, several big names, including Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church lost their blue tick.
The Holy See (the government of the Roman Catholic Church) was taken aback by the removal of the verified symbol. In a statement, the Vatican said it was aware of the rule change but noted that the pope had more than 53 million followers on his @Pontifex accounts in various languages.
“While awaiting to know the platform’s new policies, the Holy See hopes they will include certification of the authenticity of the accounts,” read a statement released.
After a period of confusion, Twitter restored the checkmark, albeit in grey colour this time. According to Twitter’s terms of service, the grey tick is given to any government or multilateral organisation account.
The blue tick
The blue tick was earlier given to a prominent group of users, both individual and business accounts as a way to lend credibility. With millions of users on the platform, the blue checkmark was a way to differentiate if the individual or organisation was original and not phoney.
As soon as Musk took over Twitter, he announced there will be no discrimination on the platform and even a commoner will be able to have a checkmark against their name. Thus, he introduced the Twitter Blue subscription service.
The initial iteration of the service cause chaos as scammers changed their names and pretended to be someone else, forcing Musk and his team to halt the service and close the loopholes.
After a relatively smooth rollout, Twitter announced that it would be shutting down its ‘legacy verified programme’ on April 1 but continued for nearly 20 days after.
As of now, the blue checkmark does not mean that the account belongs to someone who they claim to be but that the account has an active subscription to Twitter Blue and meets another set of criteria by Musk’s Twitter.
Notably, Musk is personally paying for the blue checkmarks of a few famous celebrities such as author Stephen King, basketball star LeBron James and actor William Shatner.
“I’m paying for a few personally,” Musk tweeted, before adding in another tweet, “Just Shatner, LeBron and King.”
(With inputs from agencies)
