(opens in new tab)<\/span> account, which now has a gold check, signifying that it’s verified as “an official organization on Twitter.” For the most part, though, the “verified” blue checks were gone.<\/p>\nRather than encouraging people to sign up for Twitter Blue, though, the new program had the opposite effect. Celebrities immediately and easily turned their backs on the whole thing, leading right-wing figures who had previously complained about being ‘censored’ on Twitter started complaining that the new program they’d embraced now had no value. Many seemed genuinely baffled by the fact that celebrities and other high-profile Twitter users wanted nothing to do with it: “Hollywood celebrities are showing exactly who they are right now – arrogant elitist snobs worth $200 million dollars who won’t pay $8 because they think they’re better than everyone else,” one said, missing the point in genuinely stunning fashion.<\/p>\n
Out of all this chaos arose the #BlocktheBlue campaign, which is a sort of boycott aimed at improving the quality of the Twitter experience by auto-blocking Twitter Blue subscribers. The idea actually goes back to last year, when dril, one of Twitter’s best-known (and straight-up best) users, said he would “absolutely block on sight” anyone subscribed to Twitter Blue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With any usefulness of the blue checkmark now gone, the idea has become more than just a joke\u2014you can actually get a Chrome extension (opens in new tab)<\/span> that will auto-block any Twitter Blue subscriber who appears in your feed. But Sweeney, who founded Epic Games in 1991 and now has an estimated net worth of $7.6 billion, doesn’t think that’s the way to go.<\/p>\n“People in this #BlockTheBlue<\/a> (opens in new tab)<\/span> pressure campaign are losers and goons,” Sweeney tweeted over the weekend. “They’re the cool kids from junior high who worked to exclude we nerds from cool kid events, plus the losers who joined in to gain cred. The elite-only verification system sucked, been criticizing it since 2018.<\/p>\n“An online community like this should be a meritocracy, where everyone has an equal chance, and merit is earned rather than anointed by a corporation. Old school Twitter had found a great expression of merit with following & retweeting. The best rose to the top. Then someone well-meaningly built a system for preventing impersonation through verification. But they broke the meritocracy with a policy deeming verification only for elite ‘noteworthy’ users, while letting Twitter employees hand out verification to their friends as a perk.”<\/p>\n
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