Yogi, SRK to Virat Kohli & Sachin: As blue ticks disappear, confusion remains over Twitter’s new policy

While it is clear that Twitter's legacy blue ticks will now come at a cost, there is still no clarity on which handles are eligible for gold & grey checks and affiliate verification badges.

Illustration by Prajna Ghosh. | ThePrint

New Delhi: Microblogging site Twitter has started removing the blue verification check marks for users who have not paid up for its ‘Twitter Blue’ subscription service, as a result of which many journalists, politicians, and government officials around the world, including in India, have lost their blue verification marks.

Businesses and government organisations, however, can still apply for verified status.

Following its takeover by Musk for USD 44 billion in October last year, Twitter announced that it would start charging individuals for blue tick verification in attempts to boost dwindling revenues. In December, it introduced new visual indicators for account identification, including gold (for companies) and grey (for government-related individuals or accounts) checkmarks.

Initially, Twitter announced that it will remove all blue ticks from 1 April, but it later changed the date to 20 April, amid reports of technical issues.

In India, many notable individuals, including most chief ministers, cricketers and film stars, have lost verification badge. These include Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, political figures such as Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, cricketers Virat Kohli and Sachin Tendulkar, and actor Shah Rukh Khan. 

However, the Twitter accounts of several offices of the Chief Ministers carry the grey checkmark, designating them as ‘government as multilateral organisations’. 

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Press Information Bureau’s official handle, too, no longer have the verification mark, along with official handles of political parties like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK). 

Meanwhile, a few celebrities retain their verification mark with Twitter owner Elon Musk personally paying for them, including American author Stephen King, US basketball superstar LeBron James and Canadian actor William Shatner.

Verification, affiliation badges & other labels

The blue checkmark, now, means that an account has an active subscription to Twitter Blue and that such accounts will not undergo review to confirm that they meet the “active, notable and authentic criteria” that was used in the previous process, as per a Twitter blog on the issue.

Twitter Blue is USD 8 per month paid service on the web, and its subscribers get access to features such as Edit Tweet and 1080p video uploads and reader mode, in addition to getting the coveted blue checkmark. In India, it costs around ₹650 per month on the web and ₹900 on the mobile app.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) have now subscribed to Twitter Blue, and have the blue verification badge.

Official business accounts, once verified by Twitter, get a gold checkmark, while government-related individuals and accounts will have a grey tick mark. For example, embassies, executive office accounts, public safety, law enforcement related accounts, heads and deputy heads of state, national-level cabinet members, etc, are eligible for grey checkmarks.

Twitter also now offers affiliation badges, which indicate that an account is connected to an organisation on its platform.

For example, the account of former US president Barack Obama shows up with blue tick with an affiliate badge — a small image of a verified organisation — showing the profile picture of The Office of Barack and Michelle Obama, displayed next to their checkmark.

Such account pages contain the profile photo of a verified organisation and can have gold, grey, or blue checkmarks depending on the type of account.

However, this policy don’t seem to be applicable universally.

For example, while the personal handle of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) carries the grey checkmark, the account of the Office of Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharamanoffc) shows no verification mark. 

Besides the checkmarks, Twitter also puts labels on accounts such as state-affiliated media label (with a podium icon), government label (a flag icon), and automated label (help identify if an account is a bot or not).

There are also professional category labels, which can be selected by users themselves when they opt to convert their account into a professional account. 

(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)