Twitter restores verification for some celebrities, including Chadwick Boseman and Kobe Bryant

After being stripped of their blue checkmarks, over the weekend, some celebrities were upgraded to the Twitter Blue program.

The Twitter Blue saga continues. 

On April 20, many celebrities, including Lil Nas X, Ciara Wilson, Halle Berry, Wiz Khalifa and more, had their Twitter accounts stripped of their valuable symbol. As theGrio previously reported, if users had not subscribed to the pay-to-play Twitter Blue program, several of them would lose their blue check mark.

In the days since, Twitter, seemingly at random, restored the verifications of many celebrities, including a handful of the deceased, but not all. 

Some restored accounts include Wilson, Lil Nas X, the late Chadwick Boseman, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson, Anthony Bourdain and more. Adding to the confusion, the restored accounts now have the Twitter Blue checkmark instead of the original, despite many users claiming to have not signed up for the program.

Lil Nas X tweeted, “On my soul [I] didn’t pay for twitter blue, [you] will feel my wrath tesla man.” 

Wiz Khalifa, who initially tweeted when he lost his checkmark, “worried about the wrong check,” was also perplexed when he received his back. 

“I don’t know what’s [going] on [with] this check business but mines is back so,” he tweeted.

It would also appear as though despite not paying for the service, Khalifa has full advantage of the features, which include editing published tweets within a 30-minute window. 

Khalifa tweeted, “The fact that you can edit tweets now is fire cause posting misspelled sh– kinda irks me.”

Even though many celebrities from the initial cohort who lost their status have received them back under the new Twitter Blue program, quite a few have not, including Halle Berry. According to the Hollywood Reporter, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has not received his status back either.  

Other famous figures like Chrissy Teigen, who received her status symbol back but didn’t want it, did some experimenting to have it removed again. Teigen learned that changing your Twitter handle removed the badge. She tweeted, “Change your name and it triggers a checkmark removal. But then don’t talk about it again or you will get another. I’m serious lol.”

It remains unclear how or why these verifications reappeared. Elon Musk has stated that he’s personally paying for the service for precisely three public figures–LeBron James, author Stephen King and actor William Shatner. Is he footing the bill for the others?  

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