If you want to keep your blue tick on Twitter, you’ll have to hand over your payment details in the next few days, according to Elon Musk.
The Twitter CEO has confirmed that the company’s deadline to remove ‘old’ blue ticks will be April 20 – just over a week away.
The date is thought to be a sly reference to cannabis, which is associated with the number 420 due to the time of day it is traditionally smoked.
Musk was famously filmed smoking the drug during a live webcast with comedian Joe Rogan in 2018.
He tweeted the update and also confirmed the news in a “hastily arranged” BBC interview, in which he accused the interviewer of lying.
“Deadline for removing old blue checks is 4/20,” Musk tweeted the new update Tuesday night in a brief message.
musk chirp Tuesday evening: “Deadline for removing old blue checks is 4/20.”
Twitter previously said that April 1st would be the date when “old” checkmarks would start to be removed — although many remained after this date, causing confusion.
On Twitter, the blue checkmark at the end of an account holder’s name is used to denote an account belonging to a person of public interest—such as a celebrity, politician, or journalist.
The whole point of the blue checkmark was that it could verify the identity of a prominent person and distinguish him or her from a fraudster.
However, under Musk’s ownership, the label is now merely an indication of an account’s subscription to Twitter Blue, the platform’s subscription service that costs up to £11 per month in the UK.
Twitter Blue gives subscribers access to several exclusive features such as custom app icons, the ability to undo a tweet once it has been posted, and for subscribers in some countries, the ability to edit tweets.
Meanwhile, some features that have long been available on the free version of Twitter — like poll voting and two-factor authentication via SMS — are coming soon or are exclusive to Twitter Blue.
Musk – who bought the social network in October for $44bn (£5bn) – is believed to be trying to get Twitter’s user base to start paying a monthly fee to boost profits.
April 20th is thought to be a reference to cannabis, which is associated with the number 420 due to the time of day it is traditionally smoked, and thus the date 4/20 (April 20th). Musk was photographed smoking the drug during a live webcast with comedian Joe Rogan in 2018 (pictured)
In the UK, Twitter Blue costs £9.60 per month for desktop, £11 for iOS and Android and adds a blue tick next to the username, among other features.
Musk has also rolled out new gold and gray tags to denote verified companies and government agencies, respectively, and he charges £1,000 a month for them.
The South African-born entrepreneur just gave his biggest interview since taking over Twitter, with the BBC at Twitter HQ in San Francisco on Wednesday.
While discussing the topic of hate speech on Twitter, Musk accused BBC interviewer James Clayton of lying because he could not support his allegations.
Musk also said that Twitter has “four months to live” if it does not make changes and cut costs to save it from bankruptcy.
The billionaire owner confirmed that about 80 percent of his staff have been laid off since he took over – including Twitter’s global communications team.
Any emails sent to press@twitter.com now get a response to a poop emoji, while Musk appears to have taken on the Comms role himself by tweeting regular updates.
Twitter has about 1,500 employees now, which is down sharply from “just under 8,000” before he took over in October.
Musk also revealed that his power grab was painful and that he felt “constantly attacked,” but financially, the company was finally breaking even.
He revealed that he was sleeping on a sofa on the seventh floor of Twitter’s headquarters.
Also this week, Musk shut down the company that owns Twitter — Twitter Inc — and merged it into a company of his own, called X Corp.
The head of Twitter and Tesla seemed to hint at the news with a A simple tweet containing the letter X.
X Corp is set to become the parent company for all of Musk’s endeavours, including SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and the upcoming platform he refers to as the “app of everything.”
This app could one day include parts or all of Twitter, as well as online services and utilities like ride sharing, food delivery, and more.
