Musk decides to give blue badge free for some X users
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San Francisco: The owner of the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, Elon Musk, started giving its premium features, such as blue verification checkmarks for free to some of the popular users of the network, Bloomberg reported.
Musk announced last week that people with more than 2,500 verified followers will be given the free features. Several users noticed this week that blue checkmarks reappeared in their profile after a gap.
Some other users were puzzled when they saw blue checkmarks this week, and the platform sent them a notification explaining the change. Under Musk's control, Twitter changed the rule that users must pay for X's premium monthly subscription to receive the blue tick. The blue tick was introduced by X's old management to distinguish and verify the identities of notable users.
Musk always criticised the old Twitter's decision to hand out checkmarks to prominent accounts. He called the strategy a "lords and peasants" system and removed all legacy blue checkmarks after he took over the company. But the new change he implemented contradicts his stance. He made it a paid privilege.
Now, 18 months after taking over the platform, he is kind of going back to the old company's way.
A spokesperson declined to Bloomberg's request for comment.
Last week, Musk announced that the X platform would soon make its "Grok" AI chatbot available to more paying subscribers in an attempt to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. In an X post, he said that Grok will be accessible to all Premium subscribers.
"Later this week, Grok will be enabled for all premium subscribers (not just premium+)," the X owner informed.