Twitter Blue users forced to pay $8 per year to stay verified after ‘#BlockTheBlue’campaign

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• Twitter accounts that have been verified for a long time began losing the blue checkmarks on Thursday.
• Users will now have to pay an $8 monthly fee for Twitter Blue in order to stay verified.
• A "Block the Blue", campaign has been launched to target those who paid for Twitter Blue.

After the blue checkmarks on verified accounts finally disappeared Thursday, Twitter users began to criticize them.

Twitter has changed a lot since Elon Musk became CEO in October. The latest change was to remove the blue checkmark from celebrities who did not pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue.

Users began blocking and ignoring those who paid to keep their blue badges as the blue badges disappeared. A Twitter account called @BlockTheBlue was set up, but quickly suspended. Meanwhile, a hashtag trending with the same name.

–Twitter Verified April 19, 2023

Musk tweeted that the change would be "quite a day" ahead of time.

The reactions to the new policy were not disappointing. As more people move to block those with a blue checkmark beside their names, the memes and criticisms of Twitter Blue users continue to roll in.

–Craig Williams (@Craigination) April 21, 2023

Musk has not yet commented on the hashtag trending to undermine Twitter’s new verification system. However, the CEO liked Tim Sweeney's tweet condemning the campaign.

Sweeney called participants in #BlockTheBlue "losers" and "goons", and criticised Twitter's "elite only verification system" (as Musk liked to say) in the statement Musk liked.

Some "Block the Blue", online activists, encouraged others to block verified accounts by scrolling through the comments of any tweet by Musk. They also pointed out that the new policy which places verified responses on top of threads makes it easier.

Musk also faced similar criticism in November, after launching Twitter Blue's verified-by-payment feature. This move led to a flood of crude jokes and impersonation accounts as people took advantage of the $8 checkmark.

—————————————————————————————————————————————
By: jhart@insider.com (Jordan Hart)
Title: Twitter Blue users paying $8 to stay verified hit by ‘#BlockTheBlue’ campaign
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/twitter-blue-users-paying-stay-verified-hit-by-blocktheblue-campaign-2023-4
Published Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0000

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