Elon Musk’s controversial decision will take effect on April 1, 2023. From this Saturday, the old certification badges will disappear, and only Twitter Blue subscribers will have theirs.
If you log into your Twitter account on April 1, 2023 and see that your blue certification badge is missing, it’s not April Fool’s Day. The loss of your badge, if sad, is completely normal: it is an idea of Elon Musk.
The new boss of Twitter has indeed decided that only subscribers to Twitter Blue would have the right to have the famous blue dot attached to their profile. This is part of his plan to replenish the coffers of the social network: make old features and free benefits payable, now accessible only to Twitter Blue subscribers (which costs between 9.60 and 11 euros per month). The disappearance of the old badges is however a very bad idea, which risks making dangerous content more visible.
A dangerous decision
As of this writing, I still haven’t lost my Twitter badge, nor have I spotted anyone complaining about having lost theirs. It’s the same for all Numerama journalists, who still have the blue tick on their account, and for other French celebrities.
The disappearance of the old badges must however take place during the day, as announced by Elon Musk. Since I don’t intend to pay to keep it, I should automatically lose it within a few hours. At that time, the only people who will still have a badge will be Twitter Blue followers, with a few exceptions: Twitter’s top 500 advertisers and top 10,000 companies will keep their gold badges without paying.
Elon Musk explained that his decision was motivated by a ” desire for equality “, because the old badge allocation system was too opaque, according to him. However, there were clear rules to follow, and an identity check was carried out by the social network teams. If the method of assigning badges was imperfect, and it nevertheless made sense: an account with a badge was an official account.
Now, having a badge doesn’t mean anything except that the account owner paid for it. It is no longer an indicator of confidence, and the accounts of fake news peddlers and French conspirators already sport a certification badge. A very bad one, which does not happen alone: from April 15, only Twitter Blue subscribers will have the right to participate in polls, and will be the only ones highlighted by the algorithm in the ” for you “. Twitter could well become, even more, a platform infested with fake news.
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