Two years on, X’s blue ticks are still causing chaos

Two years ago, Elon Musk launched ‘Twitter Blue’ with a ghastly logo design and a promise to end Twitter’s “lords & peasants system” by offering blue checkmarks to anyone prepared to pay $8 a month. Coming before the rebrand to X, the move almost killed the platform, and things haven’t got much better (see our pick of the best X alternatives if you’re wondering where to go).

With so many parody accounts buying ‘verified’ status, Twitter had to add first grey and then gold checkmarks. The result was a system of lords, peasants, and peasants who paid to not look like peasants but whose shiny blue tick was now worthless. Two years on, things are no less chaotic, with some paying peasants now complaining that their paid-for blue checkmarks are being taken away.

Twitter Blue is no more, since it’s been replaced with X Premium, which has been trying to promote itself as the ideal Christmas gift (perhaps for someone you really hate). But it seems that paying for a blue tick doesn’t mean it’s yours to keep.

There’s been a spate of complaints from people saying they had their checkmarks removed or placed ‘under review’ despite paying for X Premium. Some are claiming that it’s an attempt by Musk to stifle criticism or the expression of political views that he disagrees with, but strangely many of the people complaining are as extreme right as Musk if not more so.

It seems the mass blue tick outage may have a more mundane explanation related to payment complications involving ConservativeOG, to which many of the people complaining are linked. But Musk has caused even more controversy by revealing that verified users have the power to lower the reach of other users’ accounts by muting them. So much for an end to “lords and peasants”.

The latest controversy shows why advertisers won’t touch X. The platform has become so unreliable and prone to random chaos.

In the meantime, Tesla has launched a flying Cybertruck… kind of.