By Adedapo Adesanya
Many influential figures, among them businessmen, athletes, music stars, actors, and even religious leaders, have lost their blue tick on the popular social media platform, Twitter.
The legacy blue checks, which Twitter imprints on official accounts for free to help curb impersonations and spam, were supposed to end on April 1 but Mr Elon Musk, its owner, shifted the end date to April 20.
With the legacy checks gone, Twitter will have verification marks only for paid users and businesses, as well as government entities and officials.
Many Nigerians are not exempted, with the likes of President-elect, Mr Bola Tinubu, and his opponents, Mr Peter Obi and Mr Atiku Abubakar, all losing their Twitter verification badges.
Nigerian businessman and chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA), Mr Tony Elumelu, also saw his badge removed and took to the app to react.
“[I] woke up to see that my verification tick has disappeared. Wahala!” he wrote.
Now, if a user sees a blue check mark and clicks on it, the label reads: “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”
Largely followed accounts like Pope Francis, Kim Kardashian, Beyonce, Bill Gates, former US president Donald Trump and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, have all lost the marks.
Reports show that the initial rollout of the change appeared to be glitchy, as blue checks disappeared and reappeared on some accounts. Some other high-profile legacy verified accounts also didn’t seem to lose their checks, at least at first.
Mr Musk, however, responded to a tweet that cited an article by The Verge reporting that basketball player Lebron James didn’t pay for a Twitter checkmark — but still received one.
Mr Musk said that he is “paying for a few” Twitter Blue subscriptions “personally.”
Author Stephen King and actor William Shatner were also reported to be enjoying this privilege from the Twitter CEO.
This move by Twitter could see the rise of impersonation of high-profile users and confusion over the veracity of the information on the platform.
The move could also discourage some high-profile users at risk of being imitated on the site from using the platform. Immediately following the disappearance of legacy blue checks, some users began tweeting that they planned to leave the site.
Paying for Twitter Blue may be a huge fence to scale for many Nigerians as foreign exchange accessibility, following a downward review of benchmarks, may make it hard to pay the stipulated $8/month or $84 per year subscription fee.
Twitter Blue is an opt-in, paid subscription that adds a blue checkmark to a user’s account and offers early access to select features, like Edit Tweet, among others.
Aduragbemi Omiyale 
Business Post Contributor