In a tweet last week, Musk updated the timing to Thursday, which is 4/20, a repeated theme from the billionaire — who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — thanks to its connection to cannabis culture. (Musk also famously tweeted he was taking Tesla private at the price of $420 per share, something he was later fined for.)
The move will cap a busy week for Musk, who is also overseeing the attempted launch of SpaceX’s Starship on Thursday and spoke on Tesla’s earnings call Wednesday.
Widespread verification will democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022
For more than a decade, Twitter had verified accounts with a small, blue check, a visual confirmation that the company had authenticated that the accountholder was who they said they were. But one of Musk’s first initiatives when he took over the site last fall was to declare that system would end, and instead he would instate a $7.99-per-month service that included, among other things, a blue check mark.
“Widespread verification will democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people,” he tweeted Nov. 6.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision has been controversial, with some cheering Musk’s move as a push for equality on the site, and others expressing concern that the change could make it more likely for impersonation accounts to proliferate and misinformation to spread. Twitter was forced to quickly roll back its first launch of subscription service Twitter Blue last year when impersonation accounts spread on the site.
Twitter said it would start “winding down” the legacy system and removing check marks April 1, but many accounts kept their verification past that date. Musk pushed for the New York Times to lose its badge after the publication said it would not pay for the subscription service.
Celebrities including legendary Star Trek actor William Shatner have complained about the decision.
“I want to stay on it but I want to be sure that it’s my voice, and my thoughts that people are hearing and reading, and not somebody who … wants to harm me in some way,” he previously told The Washington Post. Shatner will stay on Twitter without a check mark until he sees what “guardrails” the company introduces, he said.
Some former employees have warned that a mass removal of verified accounts could break the site, The Post has reported.
Musk tweeted last month that “any individual person’s Twitter account affiliated with a verified organization is automatically verified.” Organizations could pay $1,000 a month to verify their accounts.
Musk has engineered major changes at Twitter since he took over in a $44 billion deal last October, including cutting the majority of the staff, firing several executives and reinstating some previously banned accounts.
The dramatic changes have caused many accounts, including celebrities and government agencies, to question the usefulness of Twitter.
