Taylor Swift, LeBron James and Stephen King are amongst the few public figures who have retained their Twitter Blue verification status.
The Elon Musk-led platform took away the checkmark from users who have not paid the $8/month subscription fee. Lady Gaga, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the Pope lost their verification ticks. Twitter had approximately 300,000 verified users under the original blue tick system – mostly public figures.
The blue tick subscription costs £11 a month in the UK and Rs 650 in India. Twitter had earlier this month warned that users who have not paid the fee will lose their verification on April 20.
Since Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover, Twitter introduced three coloured checkmarks – gold for verified business, grey for a government representative and a blue one, which can be bought.
Now, several social media users are talking about Swift, James and King retaining their tick marks.
James and Stephen King had previously said that they will not pay for the verification.
The Verge in a report Thursday confirmed that an employee at Twitter emailed the Los Angeles Lakers star to “extend a complimentary subscription to Twitter Blue for your account, @kingjames, on behalf of Elon Musk.”
LeBron James’ media advisor, Adam Mendelsohn, confirmed that James hasn’t paid to be verified, as per the report.
Stephen King tweeted that he has not paid for the blue tick and has not shared his phone number.
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“My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. I haven’t,” the author said.
However, Musk said that he’s paying for “a few” subscriptions “personally.”
“elon’s auto-subscribing celebs like stephen king, lebron james and taylor swift to twitter blue to make it seem like they’re down with his dumb charade,” a Twitter user reacted to Musk’s tweet.
“Choosing to believe Elon is paying for Taylor Swift’s checkmark,” another one added.
