Twitter claims ‘legacy’ blue checkmarks will begin to disappear on April Fools’ Day

Twitter has introduced that it’ll begin “winding down” its legacy verified program and eradicating “legacy verified checkmarks” beginning on April 1st, and is telling customers to subscribe to its Blue subscription in the event that they wish to hold their blue verify.

There’s quite a bit to unpack right here. First, the announcement isn’t essentially a shock. CEO Elon Musk has been promising to do away with “legacy” blue verify marks, or verification badges that got beneath Twitter’s earlier guidelines, since November, and he’s reiterated that they’d be going away “in coming months” a number of occasions. In accordance with Musk, these verification badges got out in a “corrupt and nonsensical” method (although they’re actually fairly helpful for letting customers verify that the celebrities they’re interacting with are certainly the actual individual).

Nonetheless, it’s additionally onerous to disregard that April 1st is April Fools’ Day, the worst vacation, and that a big a part of Elon Musk’s persona is being a troll. It’s extraordinarily potential that this announcement, which got here from the Twitter Verified account and never Musk’s account, is simply an try and freak out folks with legacy verify marks. It’s a meme at this level that members of the press are overrepresented within the pool of legacy verified customers, and nowadays Musk is clearly not a fan of the media.

It’s additionally potential that Twitter truly does intend to do that, and the date was simply chosen as a troll, the way in which Musk likes to work 69 and 420 into virtually all the pieces he does. Additionally, it simply added an enormous banner promoting the change on the prime of 1 verified Verge reporter’s timeline, so perhaps it’s actually going to occur.

So lengthy, blue verify? Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Even when it’s critical in regards to the date, Musk’s Twitter has made lots of guarantees about the way forward for the service that haven’t been saved. For instance, Musk introduced a income sharing program in February, and his tweets are nonetheless the one factor we’ve heard about it. (A number of Twitter Blue subscribers have informed The Verge in addition they haven’t heard something about this system.) Musk additionally promised to open supply “all code used to advocate tweets” on March thirty first, after lacking his first self-imposed deadline to take action.

He did, nonetheless, hold his promise to make Twitter’s press e-mail reply to inquires with a poop emoji, which it did once we despatched a request for remark for this story.

This new timeline for the tip of legacy checkmarks arrives as Twitter says it has now rolled out Twitter Blue subscriptions globally, although a number of promised options are nonetheless lacking. Should you’re a model or a authorities entity of some type that requires non-Blue verification, Twitter has an utility course of for grey checkmarks for presidency our bodies / officers and gold checkmarks for companies (which, down the road, would possibly come at a steep value).