Some accounts of Twitter With over a million followers, they got their blue badge back, without having to pay a penny for it.

American singer Beyoncé, England football team captain Harry Kane, British TV presenter and producer Richard Osman and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham are among those who recovered the badge confirming that their accounts on the social network really be theirs.

The BBC Twitter account also has its badge back and hasn’t paid for it.

Before the social network was bought by Elon Musk, the blue badge was an identity verification badge that Twitter used given freely.

It was originally used as an authentication tool, designed to help detect and authenticate fake accounts stop the spread of disinformation.

It is now a symbol that an account is affiliated with a premium service called Twitter Blue, which includes a verification process. There are different prices depending on where the subscription is taken out, but it’s round $8 per month.

American singer Beyoncé is one of those who saw how her Twitter account recovered the symbol that confirms its authenticity.

A controversial initiative

The people who had the blue tick and decided not to pay the subscription fee started losing it on April 20.

Broadcaster James O’Brien, who has 1.1 million followers, is one of those who has already recovered his badge after losing it. and confirmed that I had not paid anything.

He also noted that some accounts with less than a million followers had also regained their blue check, “entirely anointed at the discretion of Elon Musk.”

Eliot Higgins, founder of research organization Bellingcat, confirmed on Friday that the Bellingcat blue badge and verification had been provided to him for free by the platform.

Musk has confirmed that he himself paid for the subscriptions of horror novelist Stephen King, actor William Shatner, the first to play Captain James T Kirk in the Star Trek saga; and that of basketball player Lebron James. They all criticized the Twitter plan.

Twitter owner Elons Musk defended his controversial move to sue for verifying the authenticity of his users’ accounts, saying the platform’s finances are in deep trouble. GETTY IMAGES

At the time of writing, some celebrities such as actor Ryan Reynolds, who also owns Wrexham British football club, still lacked a blue tick despite having over 21 million followers.

It has been reported that removing the obsolete blue ticks had to be done manually so it is possible that the reinstallation process is also a manual process that will continue in the coming days.

The Twitter Blue plan has had a rough launch. It was initially delayed after fake accounts posing as official organizations appeared, and in recent weeks both subscribers and old verified accounts have looked the same.

Subscriber tweets are more visible, individual messages can be longer and contain fewer ads.

Musk justified the move by claiming that the company’s finances were in trouble when he took over and that Twitter was missing out on revenue. $4 million a day.

Twitter hasn’t revealed how many people have chosen to sign up for the new subscription so far, but app company Sensor Tower estimated to TechCrunch that the platform had about 386,000 subscribers as of March 2023.

Subscriptions to Twitter’s website instead of the app are not covered. However, the figure is a small fraction of the base of about 300 million users.