Famous Twitter users disavow Musk over verification return
The HinduCelebrities, professional athletes and other high-profile Twitter users are once again being verified by the social media platform and they don't know why their blue check marks reappeared — nor do they seem too happy about it. The account belonging to the Auschwitz Memorial, which has 1.5 million followers and regularly tweets out photos and names of Holocaust victims, tweeted on Sunday that after two days of no checkmark “our account got the blue tick back,” but said it was “obliged to clarify that the Memorial never subscribed and paid for the Twitter Blue as it might be implied.” After two days our account got the blue tick back. pic.twitter.com/dyXPlSzEas — Auschwitz Memorial April 23, 2023 Other high-profile accounts with more than 1 million followers — ranging from Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Bette Midler, gymnast Simone Biles Owens, writer Neil Gaiman and rapper Lil Nas X —took to Twitter to make it clear they didn't pay to get their blue check back. Added Gaiman, who has 3 million followers: "What a sad, muddled place this has become.” Midler posted on Twitter Sunday: “Yes, Elon gave me back my blue check but I didn’t pay for it. “Particularly when you click on the blue checkmark that says this user has ‘subscribed to Twitter Blue.’ If you are just giving out blue checks to certain accounts and it didn’t say that, it would probably not be as big a deal because of the verification that they had previously, it just meant that they were somewhat notable,” said Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.