Ghanaian Celebs Lose Twitter Verification Badge Over $8 Charge
Following Twitter’s new directive of charging an $8 monthly charge for account verification, a lot of mainstream Ghanaian celebs have lost their verification on the Blue app.
As it stands now, most celebs are yet to subscribe to the new directive and hence have since lost their verification badge which was previously displayed against their profile name.
The likes of Sarkodie, Bridget Otoo, Stonebwoy, Shatta Wale, Samini, Efya, D-Black, Serwaa Amihere and Black Sherif have all lost their blue badges.
However, media personality, Nana Aba Anamoah still has a blue badge attached to her account with the notification: “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”
On Thursday, Elon Musk’s Twitter started removing blue verification checkmarks from individuals who had not subscribed to its service. The checks started to vanish from the accounts of journalists, professors, and famous people.
Even some of the most well-known and popular users of the social network, such as Kim Kardashian, Beyonce, Bill Gates, Pope Francis, former president Donald Trump, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, saw their blue checks disappear.
Some government organizations also lost their blue checks, which weren’t immediately replaced with the grey checks Twitter has designated for government accounts, such as the main US Citizenship and Immigration Services account and accounts for some state Customs and Border Patrol offices.
Blue checks on some accounts vanished and reappeared during the initial deployment of the modification, which seemed to have some issues. Other prominent legacy verified accounts did not initially appear to have lost their cheques.
The change — and its confusing rollout — threatens to create an even greater risk of impersonation of high-profile users and confusion over the veracity of information on the platform.
“Though we have lost our checkmark, this is the official USCIS twitter account,” the government agency wrote in a tweet on Thursday. “Please beware of imposter accounts.”
