Celebrities losing blue checks as Twitter begins enforcing payment

nypost.com:

blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee to keep them.

Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes and public figures.

The checks — which used to mean the account was verified by Twitter to be who it says it is — began disappearing from these users’ profiles late morning Pacific Time.High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump.The costs of keeping the marks range from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to verify an organization, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account.

Twitter does not verify the individual accounts, as was the case with the previous blue check doled out during the platform’s pre-Musk administration.Celebrity users, from basketball star LeBron James to author Stephen King and Star Trek’s William Shatner, have balked at joining — although on Thursday, all three had blue checks indicating that the account paid for verification.