On Monday morning, the hashtag #BlockTheBlue was trending on Twitter – at least before the news broke of Tucker Carlson’s ouster at Fox News. One could easily think the hashtag was a political one, directed towards blue states, or even at police.

This was not the case. It called on celebrities and other users of Twitter who have lost their blue legacy checkmarks to block anyone who is paying for Twitter Blue. The reports of high-profile Twitter accounts blocking these subscribers began last week.

Travis Brown, an independent researcher and data analyst, says that there are approximately 630,000 Twitter Blue users. Brown, a Twitter API subscriber who shared his numbers with the Twitter community on Friday, found out that, of the 407,000 legacy verified accounts active at first of this month, just 28 had subscribed for Twitter Blue.

Clearly, the majority of legacy users are refusing to pay up – and they’re fighting back as well.

Users with high profile, such as @dril who has over 1.76 millions followers on Twitter have started the campaign #BlockTheBlue. He doesn’t want to just disrupt Twitter. His goal is to wreck the platform.

Matt Binder, Mashable’s Matt Binder told @dril: “I actively support the demise of Twitter.” I hope to undermine their attempts to be profitable, however futile they may seem, with the hope that eventually, Twitter will close shop, and we can all get out of this sewer.

Can Celebrities BlockTheBlue and other?

The question is whether such an effort to BlockTheBlue – as in the service’s subscribers – could actually work. The bigger question, however, was whether Elon Musk – who acquired the company in 2014 for $44 Billion – ever thought that anyone would be willing to pay to have their identity verified.

Jason Mollica is a professoral lecturer at the School of Communication of American University. He said, “Since Musk has taken over Twitter, there’s been an unending firestorm of debate.”

Mollica continued, “This comes after he labeled outlets such as the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) and NPR a’state run media’.” This was an effort to monetize that coveted blue tick mark and I understand why people are up in arms. The legacy system used to prove that you are a real person, regardless of your words or posts. “Now it’s little more that a vanity licence plate.”

Mollica added that he doesn’t mean to disparage anyone – whether they subscribe to Twitter Blue or have a vanity license plate – but simply wanted …read more

Source:: Social Media Explorer

Author: Aaron