Tendulkar, Dhoni, Kohli, Rohit, Yusuf Pathan amongst prominent cricketers to lose Twitter ‘blue tick’

Plenty of celebrities around the world have lost the 'blue tick' on their Twitter account on April 20. The verfied blue tick was a mark of authenticity and was originally intended to safeguard well-known personalities from impersonation. However, since Elon Musk took over the company in 2022, Twitter has been engaged in removing verified tick marks from accounts.

Notably, Twitter introduced its paid membership 'Twitter Blue' under Musk's administration, which demands that users must pay a monthly subscription cost for the verified checkmark. Prior to Musk's acquisition of Twitter, blue checkmarks were granted to important personalities, journalists, CEOs, politicians, and organizations after their identities were validated as a sign of authenticity.

Popular Indian cricketers, including MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Yusuf Pathan no longer have verified Twitter accounts. Similar to other social media platforms, they all have a large number of followers on the microblogging platform. As a result of the new Twitter policy, legendary India batter Sachin Tendulkar also lost the verification ticks.

Interestingly, this happened not just to Indian cricketers, as one of the greatest players in the history of football, Cristiano Ronaldo, also lost his verification tick on the platform. Meanwhile, basketball star LeBron James' verification checkmark remained intact, as he might have already subscribed to Twitter Blue.

In November 2022, Musk said that Twitter would be charging $8 per month for the verification badge to generate income from various sources other than advertising. Following that, the company offered checkmarks in two additional colours - gold for business organizations and grey for government, multilateral groups, and officials.

In addition, it has begun to display labels such as "state-affiliated" and "automated by" to indicate whether an account is associated with a government or not. Individual users can keep the blue tick marks paying $8 per month. Meanwhile, an organization must pay $1,000 per month to authenticate its account and an affiliate or employee account have to pay $50 monthly.