By David Ingram and Angela Yang -
NBC News
It's the end of an era on Twitter.
Many users of the platform said on Thursday that they had lost their blue verification mark and posted their profiles without it to prove it.
Accounts with that blue mark had received that distinction from the company's previous management, as
a way to identify accounts that belonged to public organizations or important users.
The platform had initially said it was going to take that system offline on April 1.
But that date passed and nothing happened.
Last week Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, announced that the change would occur on April 20.
The official page of Pope Francis on Twitter, after the blue mark confirming its authenticity was removed by the social network.Getty Images
Since early Thursday afternoon,
celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian have lost their blue markings
.
Prominent TV personalities like CNN's Christiane Amanpour and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow had also lost theirs.
Public figures from Pope Francis to Bill Gates were just as lucky
.
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Congressional representatives appear to have kept the government's gray mark on their official accounts, while others, such as Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Brian Mast and Ilhan Omar, have lost the check mark on their personal accounts.
Some, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, still have the blue tick on their private accounts.
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As the removal process of the marks occurred on Thursday, some users reported that the blue marks appeared on the accounts, reappeared and disappeared again.
Many of the users who saw the checkmarks removed were ready to say goodbye to them.
Actress Halle Berry posted a meme to commemorate the loss of the blue mark.
#BlueCheckMark (blue mark), #TwitterBlue (blue Twitter) and #Verified (verified) became a trend on the platform in the United States.
Twitter now considers a verified account one that "is subscribed to Twitter Blue and has verified their phone number."
But as some profiles have continued with their blue markings, this has sparked speculation that some celebrities have paid for Twitter Blue.
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Some who have noticed changes to their profile, including writer Stephen King, have started tweeting that they haven't paid to maintain their authenticity marks.
The account of the well-known Puerto Rican reggaeton player Bad Bunny is one of those that appears without the blue verification mark.
The removal of the blue ticks is the latest step by Musk to transform Twitter
since he bought the platform in October for $44 billion and became the administrator of an essential public forum, driving away high-profile people who used it.
The move has sparked fears that Twitter users will have one less tool to distinguish known sources from copycats and hoaxes.
The marks of authenticity, which used to be free, are now available through Twitter Blue, a subscription service the company launched last year.
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The service, which costs $8 a month
and allows users to edit and delete tweets, was quickly withdrawn after a wave of fake profiles.
It was relaunched in December.
Checkmarks are mostly removed through a manual process, and the system that enables that process is prone to breakage, The Washington Post reported.
NBC News has not verified that claim.
Twitter began adding the checkmarks to certain accounts in 2009 after someone impersonating baseball coach Tony La Russa filed a lawsuit against the company.
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The blue ticks reassured some people that at least some of what they were seeing on Twitter was coming from a credible or at least known source, such as a government agency, news outlet, corporation, entertainer, or athlete.
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But over time, the issue of who was given the verification
became a source of conflict and envy
.
The term "blue check" became a popular term to refer to elites.
Twitter froze the program for four years to consider changes before relaunching it in 2021.
Musk has said since last April, even before he bought Twitter, that he wanted to see changes to the blue brands.
On Wednesday and Thursday, many users had prepared to lose their marks.
"Take a screenshot of this in case I'm not there tomorrow," Mark Hamill, star of the Star Wars film, wrote in a message, adding a blue tick to his tweet.