Twitter has announced that the old blue checkmarks are being discontinued next month. The company is calling them the ‘legacy’ checkmarks, but these are just the users on the platform which were previously verified using the old process, which Elon says was pretty corrupt anyway. On 1st April, (great choice of a date) Twitter will start to wind down the old verified program and start removing blue checkmarks from those companies and users which were verified as a part of it.

On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks. To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here: https://t.co/gzpCcwOpLp

Organizations can sign up for https://t.co/RlN5BbuGA3…

— Twitter Verified (@verified) March 23, 2023

Twitter has said that any users wishing to keep their checkmark, can simply sign up for Twitter Blue. However, this news shouldn’t come as a shock to users. Elon Musk said back in November 2022 that in the future, the legacy verified program would be canned. Musk said at the time “far too many corrupt legacy Blue ‘verification’ checkmarks exist.”

Twitter has also debuted support for Twitter Blue worldwide the week, allowing pretty much anyone with a valid phone number to sign up and get verified. There is a small grace period for some checks to be done on the profile picture and name. If you do signup for Blue, you get access to longer tweets, now up to 4,000 characters, editing support and eventually less advertisements and revenue sharing.

Twitter Blue is $8/month via twitter.com and $11/month when paid using the iOS app. Both methods give you access to the same things on all platforms. Twitter is just tacking on the 30% Apple takes for in-app-purchases.