Twitter begins to erase blue ticks

Twitter began to remove the blue checkmarks on Thursday from the verified accounts of people that include international organisations, personalities and celebrities. 

Donald Trump and Justin Bieber were among those who lost their blue marks. 

Twitter CEO Elon Musk who witnessed the evaluation of the company after buying it for $44bn said he would get rid of the "lords [and] peasants system."

He said people will be able to retain the badge at the cost of $8. Musk last year said this would "democratise journalism [and] empower the voice of the people."

On the dates on which the marks were to be removed, the action did not occur. However, on Thursday,  many organisations and celebrities including Bill Gates lost their marks. It sparked the concerns of reliability of the information in case of emergencies. 

US Senator Brian Schatz on Twitter wrote: "There really ought to be a way for emergency managers to verify that they are real on this website or imposters will cause suffering and death."

"I am not complaining about my own check mark, I just think during natural disasters it's essential to know that FEMA is actually FEMA," he wrote, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that steps in after hurricanes and deadly storms.

Some people reported having retained the blue ticks for which Musk said he is personally paying. 

In a reply to another tweet, he wrote: it was only for Star Trek's William Shatner, basketball superstar LeBron James and author Stephen King.

Media labels

After the removal of the blue badges, news organisations started to criticise Twitter on the labels that appear to be attached to their accounts indicating "state-affiliated" or "government funded."

However, AFP reported that those too had disappeared from many high-profile media accounts.

AFP noted: As of 0600 GMT Friday, they no longer appeared on the Twitter accounts of US radio station NPR, Canadian broadcaster CBC, China's official news agency Xinhua and RT of Russia.

The policy behind such labels, Twitter noted, was to indicate that the entities were "the official voice of the nation-state abroad".

However, recently, media organisations that receive public funding but were not controlled by any governments saw labels attached to their accounts.

NPR and CBC ceased using Twitter after receiving the title, 

Hu Xijin, the former editor of the Chinese state tabloid Global Times wrote on Twitter: "I support Twitter's removal of all 'State-affiliated media' labels." 

His account too was not tagged with the title affiliated with the Chinese state.