X Is Suddenly Prohibiting Users From Hiding Their Blue Checkmarks Earlier this month, X gave blue checkmarks to accounts with over 2,500 verified users — regardless of whether or not they opted in.
By Emily Rella
It's been a long and confusing road for verified users on X (formerly Twitter) since Elon Musk took over — and now it looks like the billionaire is making more changes to the platform.
On Thursday, verified users on X received notifications that they would no longer be able to hide their blue checkmark from their profile.
BREAKING: #X seems to be removing the ability to hide the verification checkmark! pic.twitter.com/1Kn2OU4puj
— Nima Owji (@nima_owji) April 11, 2024
"The hide your checkmark feature of X Premium is going away soon," the notification reads. "Tap to manage your X premium features."
Related: Elon Musk Is Mysteriously Re-Verifying X Accounts as the Platform Cleanses Bots, Spam
Before Musk took over the platform, verification status was granted to celebrities, politicians, major organizations, public figures, journalists, executives, and others as a way of verifying the information from those accounts was official — regardless of how many followers the account had. It ensured a trust factor that led to Twitter becoming a global news phenomenon.
However, one of the first sweeping changes that Musk made to the platform, now known as X, was to remove legacy blue checkmarks and give them to any users who opted-in to the paid X Premium. This led to a slew of impersonators, parodies, and bad actors.
While there are beneficial features of Premium that users enjoy, such as more characters when writing posts and being able to edit what's been published, X offered those with active paid subscriptions the option to hide their blue checkmark.
Now, users with blue checkmarks (paid or not) will not have the ability to hide it.
X did not say when the change will occur.
Earlier this month, X started giving blue checkmarks back to certain accounts that had over 2,500 verified users. Some accounts with millions of followers had previously received their blue checkmarks back without paying as well.
Related: Twitter Will Begin Removing Blue Checkmarks
