Twitter reset popcorn blue of Twitter in some media, celebrities and others.

According to Twitter, blue checks, once a free sign of authenticity and fame, they must now be purchased by subscribers for $8 per month.

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Paid accounts lost the blue tick on Thursday as Elon Musk launched the “Twitter Blue” strategy to generate new revenue, announced last year.

According to Travis Brown, a Berlin-based software developer who tracks social media platforms, only a small part of blue ticked users are subscribers, less than 5% of the 407,000 “affected” profiles.

But on Friday and Saturday, several celebrities have recovered their blue markers, apparently without action on their partincluding writer Stephen King, NBA champion LeBron James and former US President Donald Trump.

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Musk said on Friday that he “personally pays for a few (subscriptions).”

The reactions were quick, but they were neither happy nor grateful: many were furious.

Several of those who accidentally won the blue ticks they specified that they had not subscribedbecause the badge has become a symbol of support for Musk.

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american rapper lil nas xin whose profile the blue checkmark appears, tweeted: “on my soul i didnt pay for twitter blue you will feel my anger Tesla Man!”.

The accounts of some deceased celebrities, such as American chef Anthony Bourdain, also received a blue tick.

“no means no guystech journalist Kara Swisher tweeted on Saturday, saying she had won the blue tick without your consent. “Curious minds need to know: does Elon want me for myself or for my 1.49 million followers?” he added, two hours after saying he wouldn’t pay “$8 /month for blue tick and features”.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who also received a blue checkmark, tweeted on Saturday, “We are not Twitter Blue followers.”

Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman, who last July mocked Musk as having “poor impulse control,” said Saturday: “So my blue check came back. to do with it, and I’m definitely not going to pay.”

The Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX official, true to form, responded with an image of a baby smeared in ketchup, crying into his plate of pasta and wearing a bib with a blue tick on it.

Many official media accounts have picked up a tick, including that of AFPwho is not a Twitter Blue follower. The New York Times he regained his gold badge this month after Musk called the organization “propaganda”.

He Time is one of the leading media groups that has a gold badge reserved for an “official business account” that pays at least $1,000 per month.

Tick ​​reset no longer attracted US public radio NPR and the Canadian public channel Radio Canadawho recently suspended activity on their accounts and had not resumed the tweet on Sunday.

These stations were among those protesting the “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” labels that Twitter attached to them, which had previously been reserved for non-independent media funded by autocratic governments.

Twitter on Friday removed those labels, including those applied to China’s official Xinhua news agency and Russian RT.

Information from Infobae