Elon Musk Says He's Personally Paying Twitter Fee for LeBron James, Stephen King and William Shatner
Elon Musk Claims He’s Personally Paying Twitter Fee for LeBron James, Stephen King and William Shatner to Retain Blue Check-Marks https://t.co/KtgSf2C7eI
- Variety (@Variety) April 21, 2023
After Twitter’s mass revocation Thursday of thousands of “legacy” verified blue check-marks, carrying out owner Elon Musk’s long-promised purge of the “corrupt” system, several high-profile accounts still had the iconic blue badges… even though they evidently aren’t paying for Twitter Blue (the subscription service whose perks now include a blue check-mark).
Those included NBA superstar LeBron James, actor William Shatner and author Stephen King - each of whom had tweeted that they wouldn’t pay for Twitter Blue or had complained about Musk’s switch in the verification program.
Musk later admitted he was paying for their subscriptions.
A number of users are pointing out that this was probably Musk trying to troll the celebrities in question and tricking others into thinking they had subscribed to Twitter Blue as Twitter falsely claimed that they had subscribed themselves and verified their phone number. (Musk only admitted it hours after everyone had figured out he was behind this.)
Musk has been trying to get King's attention on Twitter for months by tweeting at him but King has always ignored him.