Pay to be promoted by Twitter. This is the main feature of the subscription offered by the social network. But users tempted by Twitter’s blue could end up being invisible. Since the withdrawal of the landmark certifications on Thursday, a wave of bans has hit the platform.
Grouped under the acronym #BlockTheBlue (literally, block blue badges), Internet users say they block Twitter Blue subscribers as soon as they know them, reports the Washington Post. Some even go as far as embedding the hashtag directly into their username.
“This makes the site unusable”
Among the most active blockers is Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Cyber Law School. She indicates on Twitter that she has blocked some 200,000 paid accounts. This technique allowed him to avoid facing the degraded status of the social network before taking a look at the platform from another account.
One of Twitter’s pioneers, @dril, has also joined the #BlockTheBlue movement. This Saturday he posted a photo of a toilet. He assigned a white check mark on the background of blue water to distract from the blue insignia. The post is accompanied by a message summarizing what he thinks of paying users, calling them sick brains in general.
without your consent
The only problem is that Elon Musk tried to undermine the fight against Twitter Blue. To do this, he contented himself with assigning blue badges to certain accounts, without his consent. Thus, the network claims that these users have subscribed even when they try to remove it from their feed.
The billionaire admitted at the end of the week that he personally paid for a subscription to writer Stephen King, basketball player LeBron James and actor William Shatner. Over the weekend, many celebrities, who posted whether or not they wanted to subscribe to Twitter Blue, saw a blue badge return to their profile. All when they had not asked for anything.
Source: BFM TV
