【2008 Archives】

You can't make this up: First008 Archives Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk said the company would remove legacy blue checkmarks for users who didn't cough up $8 per month for the Twitter Blue subscription tier. It took a while for the new, paid-for checkmarks to arrive, but the legacy checkmarks remained. Now, Twitter has finally killed off the blue checkmarks for non-paying users, but not all of them, as some celebrities still have the checkmark despite not paying for them.

Turns out, Elon Musk is paying for these checkmarks out of his own pocket.

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The man confirmed it himself on Twitter, admitting that he's personally paying for the blue ticks of William Shatner, LeBron James, and Stephen King. We checked and indeed, all three accounts still have their blue checkmark.

Musk did not elaborate further on why he chose to pay for the checkmarks, and it's unclear whether he plans to pay for more.

It may be Musk's idea of a joke, given that all three explicitly said they would not pay for the checkmarks. In a recent tweet, King said he hasn't subscribed to Twitter Blue or given his phone number to Twitter; previously, he said he won't pay for the checkmark out of principle.

• Elon Musk says his TruthGPT AI will be ‘unlikely’ to annihilate humans
• Rihanna, Taylor Swift among the few celebrities paying Twitter to keep their blue checkmarks
• Bye, bye blue checks: Twitter wipes legacy verified badges from the platform
• Bluesky, Jack Dorsey's decentralized Twitter killer, is now on Android
• Here's how to change the text size on Twitter

It could also be Twitter's new monetization model:

1. The company charges for checkmarks

2. People refuse to pay

3. Elon Musk steps in with his own money

4. Profit!

For most of us who don't subscribe to Twitter Blue, though, the checkmarks appear to be gone. At least now there's hope that a benefactor will descend from above and cough up the $8 per month instead of us.