Twitter says it is stripping all verified accounts of their 'legacy' blue ticks from April

With the chaos that has followed the arrival of Elon Musk at Twitter, it's often difficult to know which announcements to accept at face value, and which to take with a pinch of salt.

The latest announcement concerns the blue ticks used to signify verified accounts. The social platform has announced that "legacy" checkmarks (that is, those that have not been paid for) will be removed starting on April 1 -- April Fool's Day.

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While it would be easy to dismiss the announcement as a prank because of the chosen date, killing off legacy blue verification ticks is something that Musk has been talking about for a number of months.

Having introduced Twitter Blue -- a subscription service that lets users pay for a blue tick and gain access to additional features and options on Twitter -- the fate of older, non-paid-for ticks has been hanging in the balance.

For some time, accounts with legacy checkmarks have been flagged up with a message that reads: "This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable". But in a tweet from the Twitter Verified account, the company revealed the next stage of its plans:

Twitter will clearly be hoping that in stripping many users of their blue tick -- seen by many as a badge of honor -- more people will be encouraged into paying for Twitter Blue. Whether this dream of Musk's comes to fruition remains to be seen.

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