Elon Musk poses for a photograph.

Gulf Today Report

Twitter Chief Elon Musk has revealed that the social media platform’s legacy account verification tags will be removed by next week.

In an interview with BBC, the Tesla and SpaceX boss said Twitter’s legacy blue ticks “will all be gone by next week”.

Earlier this month, the platform erupted into more chaos as Twitter removed information that differentiated between its legacy verified accounts and Twitter Blue subscribers, creating more confusion among users.

Following the changes, it became impossible to distinguish between accounts that had paid for blue checkmarks and those whose accounts had legacy badges.

Mr Musk had previously said the company was going to remove blue ticks from the accounts of legacy verified users from 1 April but the changes have not yet taken place widely.

The changes would mean only accounts that paid the company $8 or $11 per month would have the badge.

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Only the accounts of some users, including The New York Times, lost its “verified” blue tick after the news organisation said it would not sign up for paid-for verification. Doja Cat has also lost her blue tick on Twitter. When a fan noticed Doja Cat’s missing blue tick, telling her that “it’s over” for her, the “Woman” singer replied, saying: “Only fans have blue ticks.”

The social media platform is currently in the process of removing verified checkmarks from legacy accounts that won’t pay a fee of $8 for Twitter Blue.

This was after CNN reporter Oliver Darcy reported that the NYT would not be paying for verification.

On Wednesday, when the SpaceX chief was asked about the NYT losing its blue tick, the multibillionaire reportedly said: “It’s a small amount of money, so I don’t know what their problem is.”

Mr Musk added that he doesn’t want Twiter to amplify “some anointed class of journalists” who determine what constitutes news.

“I’m hopeful that this can be more a case of the public choosing the narrative, as opposed to the media choosing the narrative,” he told the BBC.

Verification marks on Twitter, denoted by a blue check next to the user’s account name, was introduced in 2009, about three years after the site was launched so that the tags could prove the identity of a user, according to Independent

Mr Musk had criticised Twitter’s old verification programme as a “lords and peasants” system, and in a deleted tweet earlier this month, he had said then that there would be a “grace” period of a few weeks before the verification checks for accounts not paying for the badge are removed “unless they tell they won’t pay now”.

Now the Tesla titan has revealed that the legacy blue ticks will be removed from accounts by next week.

He justified the move, telling BBC that any social media company that doesn’t have a paid-for verification system is likely to incur issues with things like AI.