Twitter is in quite the state right now, with the mix of actually verified accounts and those of paid subscribers. In a sense, things will be less complicated when the next month rolls around, but whether that’s happening in a good way still remains to be seen. The bird app has announced that come 1 April, it will “begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks”.
This announcement was made by the official Twitter Verified account on its own platform. In line with that announcement, the social media platform is asking users to start subscribing “to keep your blue checkmark”.
On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks. To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here: https://t.co/gzpCcwOpLp
Organizations can sign up for https://t.co/RlN5BbuGA3…
— Verified (@verified) March 23, 2023
Needless to say, if platform owner Elon Musk stands firm with this, then there will be more than just far-reaching implications. Even before Twitter Blue subscriptions was available in Malaysia, it had proven to be a problem for us. As a refresher, someone impersonated Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s account, mimicking the account name and profile picture. The only giveaway that it was a fake was an easily missable typo in the handle. Lending its legitimacy was the paid blue check mark which, at the time, was not available to Malaysian users yet.
Now that Twitter Blue subscriptions are officially available locally, things can only get wilder from here on out. And while the price of admission is still unreasonably high, on account to it not adjusting for currency differences, it’s not exactly prohibitive. And it’s not just us either, as the official Twitter Blue account has also recently announced that the subscription is now available globally.
Twitter Blue is now available globally! Sign up today to get your blue checkmark, prioritized ranking in conversations, half ads, long Tweets, Bookmark Folders, custom navigation, Edit Tweet, Undo Tweet, and more. Sign up here: https://t.co/SBRLJccMxD
— Premium (@premium) March 23, 2023
All that being said, there’s still hope that the bird app won’t be following through with this. One is that the Chief Twit has yet to implement a lot of features he promised to Twitter Blue subscribers, such as ad kickbacks. Another is the date of when these changes is scheduled to go into effect, which is 1 April.
(Source: Twitter [1], [2])
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