US Market
William Shatner, Monica Lewinsky, and other prolific Twitter commentators — some household names, others little-known journalists — could soon be losing the blue checkmarks that helped verify their identity on the social media platform.
They could get the marks back by paying up to US$11 a month. But some long-time users, including 92-year-old Star Trek legend Shatner, have baulked at buying the premium service championed by Twitter’s billionaire owner and chief executive, Elon Musk.
After months of delay, Musk is gleefully promising that Saturday is the deadline for celebrities, journalists, and others who had been verified for free to pony up or lose their legacy status.
“It will be glorious,” he tweeted on Monday in response to a Twitter user who noted that Saturday is also April Fools’ Day.
After buying Twitter for US$44 billion in October, Musk has been trying to boost the struggling platform’s revenue by pushing more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also reflects his assertion that the blue verification marks have become an undeserved or “corrupt” status symbol for elite personalities and news reporters.