Twitter relaunches its paid blue tick feature

Twitter’s paid blue tick feature, which allowed people to pay for a verification check mark, was paused recently after reports that some users were abusing the service. 

However, the feature has now been relaunched and will still cost $7.99 a month, although there will now be an increased fee of $10.99 for those using the Twitter app on Apple devices. 

Subscribers with a blue tick have their tweets prioritized above other users, see fewer ads, and can post and view longer, higher-quality videos on the platform. 

Previously, a blue tick was given out by Twitter to some users for free and was used to verify high-profile accounts to show authenticity. But, Elon Musk argued that that system was unfair. 

Since buying the company for $44 billion in October, Elon Musk said he plans to make the company profitable, as it was operating at a loss of $4 million per day. 

This change was one of many changes Elon Musk has made since taking over the company. Some others include mass staff lay-offs, requiring staff to work longer hours, and reinstating some controversial, banned accounts, including Donald Trump, Kanye West, and Andrew Tate. 

He also says that accounts that are inactive for a certain period of time will be deleted, and blue tick accounts will have extra features like editing posts. 

The decision to allow users to purchase blue ticks was another strategy to boost profits, but it has meant some users impersonating brands and famous people. 

For example, in one instance, a user claiming to be the US pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly tweeted “insulin is free”, causing the real firm’s share price to tumble. 

Twitter says it plans to address this by labeling blue tick accounts with “legacy verified account” and “may or may not be notable”. These will eventually be replaced with either gold (for businesses) or gray (for others such as authorities) badges.