Science & Tech

Twitter users have a new strategy for taking on Elon Musk’s Blue subscription model

Twitter users have a new strategy for taking on Elon Musk’s Blue subscription model

Related video: Elon Musk 'personally' paying for LeBron James and Stephen King's Twitter Blue subscriptions

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After failing to remove ‘legacy’ blue ticks from ‘notable’ Twitter accounts on April Fools’ Day, owner Elon Musk finally managed to take away verification from most celebrities and high-profile figures who refused to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription on Thursday (yes, he actually did it on 4/20).

However, the move has already been met with strong opposition, and now there’s a whole campaign underway to undermine Musk’s paid subscription model – in the form of the trending hashtag #BlockTheBlue.

Twitter content creator Dril wrote back in November that he would “absolutely block on sight” anyone who had paid for Blue, and in comments made to Mashable, he explained his approach to Blue subscribers was “funny”.

“99 per cent of Twitter Blue guys are dead-eyed cretins who are usually trying to sell you something stupid and expensive, and now they want to pay a monthly subscription fee to boost their dogs*** posts front and center.

“Blocking them and encouraging others to do the same on a massive scale is the complete opposite of what they want,” he said.

It now appears many other accounts are on board with the idea:



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Although of course, Musk isn’t exactly happy with the plan to deprive Twitter of some revenue, and like the free speech absolutist he is, the @BlockTheBlue account has been suspended from the platform:

This isn’t the first time Musk has been accused of being “petty” in his management of the social media network either, as he came under fire earlier this month for his reaction to a new Twitter-like feature from the newsletter platform Substack.

It is not clear what Twitter rules @BlockTheBlue has violated to warrant a suspension.

And rather unhelpfully, when approached by indy100 for comment, Twitter once again auto-replied with “💩”.

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