I disagree. It was a wide gamut, not just one political ideology. Just the commentary in the last week shows it was across the board. Fox News personalities to AOC to Steven King to a few other Hollywood celebs bitching about it. Wide range of political leaning, common thread…all celebrities.

They're not "bitching about" more people being verified, they're "bitching about" the wanton, clueless vandalism of the verification system.

All I see is a bunch of wealthy and famous folks whining that their little badge of exclusivity has become easily obtainable by the masses for the price of a latte.

Boo hoo. Your little blue badge of elitism is now available to the proles, how will you ever cope with such uppityness?

Let's make this simple.

Old blue checkmark: Twitter confirms that this person is who they claim to be. If an account is called DonaldTrump and has a blue checkmark, Twitter confirms it is the account of the former president.

New blue checkmark: Twitter confirms that someone pays 8 dollars every month. If an account is called DonaldTrump and has a blue checkmark, Twitter confirms that someone is paying 8 dollars every month for this account.

So, if you see a tweet from the blue checkmark @DonaldTrump saying "I am running for president", with the new system, you have no idea if the former president has publicly announced he is running again, or if some rando who had 8 dollars to spare wants to make it seem so.

> So, if you see a tweet from the blue checkmark @DonaldTrump saying "I am running for president", with the new system, you have no idea if the former president has publicly announced he is running again, or if some rando who had 8 dollars to spare wants to make it seem so.

Good! I can’t think of a better way to make Twitter better for the world than to eliminate the elitism.

What's elitist about confirming the identity of who is speaking?

Nothing, unless you are selectively only confirming specific people.

You're projecting your selfish, zero-sum view of the world on other people.

Nope, I am opining about what I have seen and heard from people publicly complaining about it over the last few days since the news came out about the change.

For what it’s worth, if Twitter eliminated the blue checkmark entirely…the exact same people would be complaining about that too. It’s their special celebrity badge that separates them as “valid” from the little people.