Twitter has started removing the blue tick, or verification badges, of all sorts of Indian celebrities, politicians and users who have chosen not to subscribe to the platform's paid service.
Celebrities who have been shorn of the tick include Bollywood stars such as Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, and Rajinikanth.
Among high-profile politicians who lost their blue tick are Delhi state chief Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi, the state chiefs of Uttar Pradesh (Yogi Aditynath), Tamil Nadu (Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin), West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee), Chhattisgarh (Raman Singh). Others to have lost the mark include Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Amit Malviya, Siddaramaiah, Doddalahalli Kempegowda Shivakumar, Basavaraj Somappa Bommai, Manish Sisodia, and Satyendar Jain.
India's major political parties - the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) - also lost their verification ticks.
Sport personalities who lost blue ticks include such luminaries as Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Saina Nehwal, Sania Mirza, Rohit Sharma, Sourav Chandidas Ganguly, Pusarla Venkata Sindhu, Neeraj Chopra and Mary Kom.
Pay $8, or Lose Your Blue Tick
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter last October, Twitter has undergone radical changes, including laying off more than 3,700 employees and offering users an $8 monthly blue-check subscription, a way to verify users with the coveted blue checkmarks.
Originally, these badges were given to high-profile individuals, journalists, executives, politicians, and establishments after verifying their identities as a symbol of their authenticity.
Now the blue tick is available through a paid service, which in India costs around ₹650 per month on the web and ₹900 on the mobile app.
Twitter on Blue Tick
© Photo : Twitter
Musk last month announced that microblogging sites had seen a 50 percent drop in advertising revenue between October and March, indicating the need for alternative revenue streams.
These new rules are supposed to incentivize users to subscribe to the platform's paid features, which could help Twitter's future revenue growth.
According to Reuters, only a small fraction - approximately 1 percent - of Twitter's users have subscribed to "Twitter Blue".