Elon Musk's X Now Letting Twitter Blue Subscribers Hide Their Checkmarks
Twitter's rebranding to "X" is in full swing. Only a few days after announcing the X logo, Elon Musk plastered a new X sign on the Twitter office building that went down as fast as it went up, and sued a nonprofit researching hate speech on the platform. Meanwhile, there was also a user function X Corp. silently added to the platform that concerns the controversial blue checkmark.
The Twitter blue checkmark has a long history, and it was first added back in 2009 to authenticate well-known figures and celebrities on the platform to combat impersonation. However, Musk announced that he had another idea for the blue checkmark when he took over the company. In what Musk claimed was an effort to make Twitter more profitable, he fired most of his staff, stripped all celebrities of their blue checkmark, and introduced a paid subscription service for the symbol.
In an unexpected move, Twitter now lets users hide their blue checkmarks. Many already suspect why this feature was added, and it's become a joke to some.
Subscribers can now hide their support for Musk
Although celebrities got their Twitter blue checkmark returned to them for free, many people still pay for the service. These users noticed that a "Hide your checkmark" feature was recently added to the X Blue support page.
It isn't perfect, though, as it notes that "some places and some features could still reveal you have an active subscription." This makes sense, as some subscription features — such as the ability to publish longer than regular Tweets — would be hard to hide. It also notes that "Some features may not be available while your checkmark is hidden." However, the support page does not detail which features would be restricted or disabled while the hidden mode is activated.
Ever since Musk and his team started linking verified badges to Blue subscriptions, Twitter's familiar checkmarks have become a point of contention in debates, memes, and flame wars on the platform. Adding the ability for Twitter Blue subscribers to hide the checkmark is almost certainly a response to this.
As the Musk controversies pile up, so, too, does the criticism. It makes sense that X Corp. wanted to offer a way for users to support Musk and the X platform without potentially being exposed to any ridicule stemming from the blue check.