Musk-led X changes course, gives away blue ticks to popular users for free

X owner Elon Musk is giving away free premium features — including the once-coveted blue verification checkmarks — to some of the social network’s most popular users.

Musk pledged last week to start handing out the free features to people who had more than 2,500 verified followers. This week, several users noticed that blue checkmarks had reappeared on their profile.

Some users who got the blue checkmarks this week were perplexed as to how they got there, and the company sent some users a notification explaining the change. Typically accounts must pay for X’s premium monthly subscription to receive a blue badge, which was used by Twitter’s old management to distinguish and verify the identities of notable users.