Twitter reinstates blue tick for celebrity accounts

"Apparently I’ve paid for Twitter Blue & given them a phone number to verify except that I haven’t. Mr Musk are you paying for mine as well?" — Omar Abdullah

April 25, 20231138 views0

New Delhi — Microblogging site Twitter has restored the blue verification badges on several celebrity accounts just days after the platform culled the legacy blue checkmarks for non-paying users. The move has come as a surprise to many.

Indian top politicians and celebrities from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and National Conference (NC) vice-president Omar Abdullah to Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan lost their verified blue ticks on their Twitter accounts earlier this week after Elon Musk-led microblogging site began removing the checkmark icons from accounts that did not pay a subscription fee. However, the blue ticks have made a surprising comeback on accounts of these celebrities, including top cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli.

Omar Abdullah, who got the blue tick back on his Twitter handle, tweeted that he did not pay for it. “Apparently I’ve paid for Twitter Blue & given them a phone number to verify except that I haven’t. Mr Musk are you paying for mine as well? ” he posted on the micro-blogging site.

Apparently I’ve paid for Twitter Blue & given them a phone number to verify except that I haven’t. Mr Musk are you paying for mine as well? 😄
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) April 23, 2023

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai also expressed her surprise at getting her blue tick back. “I don’t know what happened but I’m happy to have my blue tick back so everyone knows I am still Malala,” she tweeted.