Elon Musk's Twitter Purge Removes Blue Verification Checks from High-Profile Users

Elon Musk is personally paying for select users to remain verified on Twitter, even when those users had indicated they didn't want that status under his new system of blue check marks as a subscription perk. Twitter has removed most of the blue check marks from the hundreds of thousands of accounts belonging to celebrities, journalists, and other public figures who had been verified by Twitter before Musk changed the rules. Musk has argued that a pay-for-verification scheme is more "democratic" than the previous system, which helped the public know which accounts were genuine but some users resented as elitist.