It’s a mess on Twitter! We take stock of the badges…

Twitter badges, before the latest changes, were used to identify accounts with verified identities. A form of certification for a public personality profile, free and granted after verification by the network teams. Except that, a few weeks ago, Elon decided that the famous blue badges would be paid for!

Several badges to be more clear?

So, since the blue badge no longer means certified and verified, Twitter has implemented several badges, in order to keep a little bit of clarity on the network:

• THE blue badge : everyone can get it, for ten euros a month, without guarantee of the identity of the profile. A golden opportunity for many imposters.
• THE gold badge : it certifies the official accounts of companies and NGOs. Obviously, it is not free, but is obtained against the tidy sum of 1,140 euros monthly (in France)
• THE gray badge : this is automatically assigned to governmental and institutional accounts and profiles, such as the UN, UNESCO, NATO, etc.

To complicate things a bit, be aware that there is a second blue badge. It strongly resembles the first, but does not have the same meaning at all.

• THE Blue badge with a company logo next to it : it is activated by a company in Gold to link employee profiles and certify them via the company profile. Everything, of course, has a price, 60 euros per month.

Blue badges: paid, but not really

Good ! A bit complex, but at least it’s simple: to be certified, you have to pay. No, is it more complicated?

And yes, because faced with the outcry over this strategy, as well as the very (very) low number of former certified people having switched to paying (28 profiles out of more than 419,000 in 24 hours), Musk took a radical decision… most of the accounts certified with more than one million subscribers remained so for free, but with a mention added against their will: “Subscribed to Twitter Blue”. When you can keep it simple…

But where am I certified?!
I didn’t even pay??? pic.twitter.com/hq9AN1T9IO

— Cyril (@Cyril_mp4) April 23, 2023

Out of 240 million Twitter users, therefore monetizable, only 650,000 have opted for Twitter Blue, i.e. less than 1%. Hard.

But why is it moaning on Twitter?

If you don’t frequent Twitter, you probably don’t know that a lot of people take themselves very seriously there. For some, Twitter is very important and a certain fringe of users did not welcome the arrival of Elon “Rocket man” Musk at the controls of the blue bird. For what ? Because he is for freedom of expression and he has decided to put an end to the self-righteousness displayed on this network.

Each change in the mode of operation of Twitter is decried by many journalists or activists. In the beginning, the big verified accounts grumbled because their badges were taken away from them and now they complain because they were given them back, suggesting that they had paid. However, just click on the profile to get to the bottom of it. Admittedly, Musk shows up like a mad dog in a game of bowling, but after all it’s his game and his bowling…