Twitter

A 51-year-old man has made a joke that reeks of the same sophistication a 13-year-old boy might bring to Reddit.

The promised changes to the platform's verification program have been slow. Attention has focused instead on the image of a doge in place of the blue ...

[announced](https://twitter.com/verified/status/1639029459557679104) it would start removing check marks on April 1 for those who weren’t paying for the symbols. Musk had asked a judge to dismiss a multibillion-dollar racketeering lawsuit that accused the billionaire and Tesla, his electric car company, of manipulating the cryptocurrency’s price with his tweets. Musk, who has said he is a champion of free speech, announced the change to Twitter’s verification program last year, a wave of impersonation erupted. Last year, he said that Twitter would begin removing verification check marks from users’ profiles unless they paid an $8 monthly fee for Twitter Blue, a subscription service that includes the blue and white check mark badge on users’ profiles. In November, a user who had paid for a check mark through Twitter Blue Other brands faced similar hoaxes, forcing Twitter to pause the sign-ups for Twitter Blue. Others revamped their profiles to pose as the author J.K. That helped Twitter because public figures drove “a disproportionate amount of engagement” on the service and the celebrities and politicians could post freely without fear of being impersonated, said Lara Cohen, Twitter’s former global head of marketing and partners. Within an hour, The Times’ gold verification badge disappeared. Pranks from users trying to exploit the change by posing as a celebrity or another public figure were muted, with only a few hoaxes spreading on the platform. “When they say they’re going to do a thing right now, they haven’t proven that they are consistently doing those things.” The promised changes to the platform’s verification program have been slow.

Some VIP Twitter users woke up on Saturday expecting to have lost their coveted blue verification check marks in a previously announced purge by Elon Musk.

[said](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/27/business/william-shatner-elon-musk-twitter-verification/index.html) it would “begin winding down” blue checks granted under its old verification system — which emphasized protecting high-profile users at risk of impersonation — on April 1. “There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities,” he said in a tweet last week. The program was quickly put on pause after being plagued by a wave of celebrity and corporate Although the New York Times’ main account lost its blue check, its other accounts, such as those for its arts, travel and books content, remained verified. The price of dogecoin shot up 20% on Monday. It also highlights how Musk often appears to guide decisions about the platform more by whims than by policy. [said](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/28/tech/elon-musk-verified-only-for-you-feed/index.html) that starting on April 15, only verified accounts would be recommended in users’ “For You” feeds alongside the accounts they follow. [said it’s not clear](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/tech/elon-musk-twitter-verification-plans/index.html) that reserving verification for paid users will reduce the number of bots on the site, an issue Musk has raised on and off over the past year. [pushed back](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/27/business/william-shatner-elon-musk-twitter-verification/index.html) against the idea that, as power users that draw attention to the site, they should have to pay for a feature that keeps them safe from impersonation. In order to stay verified, Musk said, users would have to pay $8 per month to [join the platform’s Twitter Blue](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/twitter-verified-checkmarks/index.html) subscription service, which has allowed accounts to pay for verification since December. [previously told CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/media/news-organizations-elon-musk-twitter-checkmark/index.html) it would not pay for verification. [previously announced purge](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/27/business/william-shatner-elon-musk-twitter-verification/index.html) by Elon Musk.

Twitter is having a normal one: the bird logo has been replaced by a Doge icon, and retweets are showing up on people's following timelines without any ...

[hasn’t tweeted about](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/with_replies) the change to retweet labels. [stopped showing what tweets](https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23660291/twitter-replies-update-confusing) people were replying to, filling our timelines with replies that just looked like vague subtweets. [currently being sued](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63388702/1/johnson-v-musk/) by investors claiming that he is “engaged in a Crypto Pyramid Scheme (aka Ponzi scheme) by way of Dogecoin cryptocurrency,” which lists his tweets about it as evidence. [an April Fools’ day joke](https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/1/23665955/april-fools-day-2023-pranks-jokes-best-worst) that showed up two days late. If you click into the tweet, the retweet label shows back up, and if you try to reply to it, it’ll still tag the person who retweeted it. Now, that label seems to have vanished on the web, so the tweets look exactly like the ones from the people you follow.

The social media company said it would start removing blue checks from accounts that haven't signed up for its paid service, Twitter Blue.

[pretended to be the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly](https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/eli-lilly-hit-new-twitter-blue-fake-account-forced-apologize-over-free-insulin-tweet) and tweeted that the company was offering insulin for free. [The New York Times](https://twitter.com/nytimes). It's unclear if any individual Twitter users with legacy blue check marks have had them involuntarily stripped as of Monday. [Elon Musk has argued](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1640188239976734720) that Twitter Blue endeavors to treat accounts equally and not give some preferential treatment, but experts warn that the relaxed verification standards may make it easier for misinformation to spread. [according to the company](https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue#tbranking). [would begin removing the blue check marks](https://twitter.com/verified/status/1639029459557679104) from accounts that haven't paid for its new service, Twitter Blue, but users say their blue checks are still there even though they haven't forked over any money.

Elon Musk had promised to take away all of Twitter's blue checkmarks doled out to Hollywood stars, professional athletes, business leaders, ...

(Warwick, for her part, made clear she will not be paying for a blue check because that money will “be going towards my extra hot lattes”.) But so does anyone who pays between $8 and $11 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription – and there is no way to tell the difference. Now, Darling finally got a blue check after paying $11 last month to try out some of the features that come with a Twitter Blue subscription.

Matt Darling has been on Twitter for about 15 years and never cared about not having a blue check, though he'd get a kick out of whenever a verified account of ...

Twitter's blue check mark has gone from a symbol of credibility to proof of membership in the Elon fan club. But first…

The price for cryptocurrency Dogecoin spiked by about 30% Monday after Twitter CEO Elon Musk changed the app logo from its blue bird to a Shiba Inu dog, ...

Elon Musk tweets out meme after blue bird on homepage replaced by image of shiba inu associated with cryptocurrency.

According to a leaked internal memo, Twitter is now worth less than US$20bn, under half what Musk paid for it six months ago. The plaintiffs reportedly complained the sell-off of Dogecoin began when Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live and referred to Dogecoin as a “hustle” in a segment. “Musk used his pedestal as world’s richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure and amusement,” the complaint reportedly stated. [reported in June last year](https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/elon-musk-sued-258-billion-over-alleged-dogecoin-pyramid-scheme-2022-06-16/) that according to the complaint, the plaintiffs claim Musk knew that since 2019 the cryptocurrency had no value, but promoted Dogecoin to profit from its trading. Musk has not explained the reason for the change, but some users speculated it was meant to be an April fool’s day gag that the company was unable to bring in on time on 1 April. Twitter changed its iconic blue bird logo on Monday to mimic the logo of a popular cryptocurrency – an image of a dog that featured in viral memes – in what appears to be a late April fool’s day gag from the company’s billionaire owner,

Tuesday's lawsuit, which was filed in California Northern District Court and first reported by CNN, refers to the companies suing Twitter as “small businesses ...

The company alleged that it began contacting Twitter in November about overdue and pending invoices for services rendered under a contract signed in March 2022. In January, the firm claims that Twitter said it was conducting an “additional review” of the invoices. Some former workers have also alleged sex and disability discrimination and other issues, which the company has argued in court are without merit. The lawsuit comes as new Twitter owner Elon Musk attempts to slash costs after buying the company for $44 billion, a significant amount of which came from debt financing. “Twitter reassured White Coat Captioning it had processed and would pay these invoices, but it never did,” the firm alleged in the complaint. The four firms — captioning services company White Coat Captioning, consulting group YES Consulting and public relations firms Cancomm and Dialogue México — allege that Twitter is in breach of their contracts and has yet to pay bills ranging from around $40,000 to $140,000 for services they provided the company last year.