The blue checkmark has become notorious in Twitter/X circles as a badge for Elon Musk sycophants, or worse. Twitter—which Elon Musk has desperately tried to convince users is now called “X”—wants users to display their $8 a month blue checkmark prominently on their page. Unfortunately for those who pay up, that checkmark has become a kind of Scarlet Letter analog that many app denizens use to denote a Musk bootlicker, or worse, or much worse. Now Twitter is telling those folks who want to support Musk plunging the platform into hell that they can hide their mark of shame. Early on Tuesday, Twitter added a note about the “Hide your blue tick” toggle on the platform’s verification help page. This makes it so the blue checkmark no longer appears next to accounts’ profile pages or their posts. The site still notes that using Blue features could still identify you as a paid subscriber and that some features may not be available at all while the mark is hidden. The feature is available in the users’ Profile customization tab in account settings. (…) With this move, Musk has allowed the host of bad actors paying for verification to hide the fact they’re paying for boosted messaging. Considering how the platform has sued hate speech researchers who pointed out Twitter’s harmful metrics, the billionaire Twitter owner seems to think the best way to hide all the worst parts of his site is to sweep them under the rug.
via gizmodo: Twitter Gives Verified Users Option to Hide Their Checkmark of Shame