Twitter can let you hide the fact that you’re paying to use Twitter

Do you like the features that come with blue twitter, but not the image he conveys of an Elon Musk superfan? There may be a solution in the near future. As boing boing Remarksdeveloper Alessandro Paluzzi claims to have spotted Twitter is testing an option to hide the blue tick on your profile. Unless you write a really long tweet or otherwise post Blue-only features, other users might never know you’re paying for benefits. You will still need to verify your government ID to use the features.

Twitter is unavailable for comment as it disbanded its communications team following the Musk purchase. The test comes as Twitter says it will begin removing legacy checked ticks the 1st of April. In November, Musk called the old checkmarks “corrupt” and said the social network would remove them in the coming months.

There are reasons you might want to hide the checkmark besides humility or embarrassment, of course. You may not want to give the impression that your tweets represent your employer’s point of view. And if you share the same name as a celebrity, you might not want to risk confusing users.

There is no guarantee that Twitter will make the hide tick option widely available. If the company goes ahead, it could (further) diminish the value of the blue tick by making it inconsistently visible. On top of that, Twitter now has gold and gray check marks for corporate and government accounts respectively – these are the true upper echelon badges.