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Politicians Peter Obi, Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, and Shehu Sani are among those whose Twitter verification tags have been removed.
Equally, Twitter has removed the verification tags of some of Nigeria’s top singers Davido, Burna Boy, and Wizkid.
This followed an announcement by Twitter chief executive officer Elon Musk that users would now have to pay $8 monthly as verification subscription fee.
Musk had announced the final date for the free badge removal to be April 20, 2023. It was effected as announced.
Musk, who has seen his $44 billion investment in the site shrivel, described the blue tick before now as a “lords & peasants system.”
He added that the price could fluctuate according to country. Twitter’s Blue service operates in a handful of countries. It costs $4.99 a month in the US and in its current guise, the service offers a narrower suite of perks such as being able to undo tweets.
Musk said subscribers to the new Blue service would also get priority in replies, mentions, and searches, which he said was “essential to defeat” spam accounts.
The changes would affect about 400,000 blue tick accounts overall on Twitter.
The blue tick verification process was brought in by Twitter in 2009 in response to celebrity concerns about impersonation.
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