Los Angeles, United States: On Thursday, Twitter started to remove its blue ticks in bulk as users including the Pope, Donald Trump, and Justin Bieber lost access to the icon that had previously represented a verified account.
Owner Elon Musk recently promised to abolish what he called a “lords & peasants system” after witnessing his $44 billion investment in the site shrink.
Instead, he proposed selling the blue badge to anybody who would pay $8 per month, a proposal he said would “democratise journalism & empower the voice of the people” the previous year.
Prior deadlines for the reversal of the ticks, which were mostly utilised by politicians, journalists, and celebrities, have passed without any discernible movement.
But on Thursday high-profile accounts, as well as those of many reporters at AFP and other news organizations, appeared to have had the checkmarks removed.
Politicians and official bodies also appeared to have been hit, with US Senator Brian Schatz objecting to the possible effect on public confidence in the event of disasters.
“There really ought to be a way for emergency managers to verify that they are real on this website or imposters will cause suffering and death,” he tweeted.
“I am not complaining about my own check mark, I just think during natural disasters it’s essential to know that FEMA is actually FEMA,” he wrote, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that steps in after hurricanes and deadly storms.
Thursday’s removals follow spats between Twitter and various news organizations that have objected to labels appended to their accounts indicating they were “state affiliated” or “government funded.”
Sweden’s public radio Sveriges Radio said this week it would stop tweeting, following in the footsteps of US radio station NPR and Canadian broadcaster CBC.
Musk’s tumultuous ownership of Twitter has seen thousands of staff made redundant and advertisers fleeing the platform.
Users complain that hate speech and misinformation have proliferated and accounts with extreme views are gaining traction due to less content moderation.
This month, a closely watched forecast said Twitter’s income from advertising will fall by a large margin in 2023.
Analysts at Insider Intelligence said they were slashing an earlier worldwide revenue estimate of $4.74 billion by more than a third to $2.98 billion as trust deteriorates.
According to research firm Pathmatics, 14 of the top 30 advertisers on Twitter stopped advertising on the platform since Musk took charge on 27 October.
Insider Intelligence noted that Musk’s efforts to build up a subscription service “won’t make up for the lost ad revenue.”
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