Top India sports stars were among thousands of Twitter account users to lose their verified status effective Thursday, April 20, as Elon Musk made good on his promise to remove the blue check mark from ‘legacy’ accounts.
The who’s who of Indian sports, including Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, double Olympic medallist shuttler PV Sindhu, World Cup-winning captain MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, Olympic medallists Saina Nehwal, Neeraj Chopra and Bajrang Punia, wrestler Vinesh Phogat, two-time World Boxing Champion Nikhat Zareen, Sania Mirza, Indian football team skipper Sunil Chhetri, men’s hockey goalkeeper PR Sreejesh, were among a plethora of Indian sporting icons who “lost” their blue ticks.
The legacy blue checkmarks were previously granted to journalists, public officials, and celebrities for free as a measure against impersonation and spam on the social media platform.
Twitter, which was taken over by business magnate and Tesla CEO Elon Musk last year, had announced that blue ticks would be removed from accounts that don’t pay a monthly subscription for the service.
“Tomorrow, 4/20, we are removing legacy verified checkmarks,” the official Twitter Verified account had tweeted on Wednesday.
Tennis great Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappe and basketball legend Stephen Curry are also no longer “verified” on the social media platform.
From now on, only individuals and organisations that pay for the premium Twitter Blue subscription will get the verified credential on their profiles.
The Twitter Blue subscription is available for a monthly fee of Rs 650 on the web and Rs 900 on mobile devices.
