Elon Musk says removal of ‘legacy’ blue ticks will happen on this unusual date

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been having a hard time dealing with so-called ‘legacy’ verified accounts and removing their blue ticks if they don’t subscribe to the platform’s paid subscription model known as Blue.

After taking ownership of the social media platform in October, the Tesla and SpaceX founder’s turbulent tenure has seen him open up verification - previously only reserved for accounts deemed “notable” by the platform – to any user willing to spend either £9.60 or £11 (for desktop and mobile respectively) for the privilege.

This soon prompted impersonations, and an “official” label was added to some accounts, before Twitter decided to take down Blue completely in November.

It returned a month later, but Musk was still having to wrestle with how to tell the difference between those ‘legacy’ and formerly “notable” accounts, and the paid Blue subscribers.

So an announcement was made in late March that the company would “begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks” on 1 April – yes, April Fools’ Day, because Twitter is obviously one massive joke to Musk.

Except, that didn’t happen. Instead, verified accounts now come with a description when the blue tick is clicked which reads: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”

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Does that clear things up?

Probably not, but now Musk has set a new date for the ‘legacy’ blue ticks to disappear from profiles which haven’t paid Twitter money to keep them – 20 April.

“Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20,” he tweeted.

Ah, there it is.

It’s not known if this is intentional, but for those unaware, 420 is widely understood to have been coined by a group of Californian students in 1971 who would smoke cannabis at 4.20pm. It’s become associated with the drug ever since.

The news has been widely criticised and mocked by Twitter users, some of whom also pointed out that 20 April is Adolf Hitler’s birthday, too:

Musk confirmed the removal of ‘legacy’ blue ticks again during a BBC News interview several hours later, in which he said his dog was now CEO of Twitter and that he sleeps in the library area of its San Francisco headquarters “that no one goes to”.

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