Elon Musk has reinstated the blue checks on Twitter, including badges for those who have died.
Just last week, Musk was removing blue checks from celebrities, athletes, and other public figures who were not willing to pay $8 a month.
While Musk has portrayed it as democratizing the user-verification process, the idea behind removing the “free” check-mark was to increase money from subscriptions to Twitter Blue.
Celebrities like LeBron James, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and many others all have their blue checks back.
The badges’ explanation states that each account “is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.” (It is implied that they are paying subscribers, however, if not most of these cases, it appears to be false.)
Twitter has also restored multiple legacy verified checkmarks for deceased individuals like Chadwick Boseman, Kobe Bryant, Paul Walker, Barbara Walters, Michael Jackson, and many others.
According to Twitter, the blue checks for these accounts claim to be “subscribed to Twitter Blue.”
It’s unclear which celebrities are paying for Twitter Blue.
Recently, Elon claimed to be paying for Twitter Blue on behalf of LeBron James, Stephen King and William Shatner.
Earlier this month, Twitter erroneously awarded a verified gold check mark to an account that parodied Disney Junior UK and tweeted racial slurs.
