Some users have been re-verified on X for being a “notable” account and given a blue check.This seems to be for users who have over 2,500 paid verified followers.But does it seem uncool?
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Wednesday night, something odd happened to me on Twitter/X. An alert popped up in my notifications: “As an influential member of the community on X, we’ve given you a complimentary subscription to X Premium …”Suddenly, the Twitter blue checkmark next to my user name that had disappeared a year ago was back. Uh oh. I found myself in a tough spot.It’s been about a year and a half since the old blue check verification system was dismantled in favor of the new paid system. During this time, the blue check has come to mean something very specific: someone who actually pays for X. Someone who is willing to pay to promote their own tweets. Someone who believes that X is a platform worth investing in rather than one that is slowly descending into chaos and irrelevance. Someone incentivized by ad-sharing payouts to post engagementbait and ragebait.(OK, I’m sure that not ALL people who were paying for a blue check fall into those categories. I’m sure some are just nice people who like the service. I haven’t personally come across those people, but surely they exist?)There hasn’t been an official explanation of why a bunch of formerly verified people just got a free blue check. But recently, Elon Musk tweeted that X would be giving free premium subscriptions to users with 2,500 paid subscriber followers. (X did not respond to a request for clarification on this policy.)This affects people with massive followings, or, for people like me with under 100,000 followers, it probably means you have a higher-than-normal amount of appeal to people who pay for X. (In my case, I suspect it’s because I’ve reported on NFTs and crypto, a topic that tends to attract paid blue checks.)
I’m not sure what to do.I don’t want people to think I paid for this (ew). I can use the option to hide the blue check on my profile (although I’ll still show up as a verified user in people’s notification tab; it’s not completely secret).Or do I keep the blue check because now there are enough other people who don’t pay for it that it isn’t an instant flag that I’m a massive jerk? Maybe it actually does look like I’m important and influential (and of course, I like to seem important and influential; what else do I have going for me?)Back in 2022 when Twitter Blue first launched (pre-Elon), I happily paid the $2.99 a month for the extra features it offered. I figured the modest fee was worth it for improved features on an app I used, uh, constantly. And honestly? It was great.I loved the “Top Articles” feature, which showed a list of the most shared news stories among the people I followed—it was a great way to quickly see what stories people were buzzing about.I also appreciated having an “Undo” button for a few seconds after I sent a tweet — a chance to catch a typo or think twice about posting something. Getting those two features back has been wonderful — I truly missed them.And now there’s a bonus: I can rearrange the navigation buttons at the bottom of the app to finally get rid of the Grok tab!I think the only reasonable answer here is to hide the blue check and enjoy the free features. Thanks, Elon, for the freebie, but I don’t want to seem like a huckster creep!
