Ford, Ontario will not pay to regain Twitter verification, premier's office says

CTV National News: Monetized Twitter verifications Elon Musk faces backlash after apparently proposing to charge Twitter users $20 a month for verification. Tom Walters reports.

Premier Doug Ford has lost his 'blue-check' on Twitter and says he will not pay to regain it.

Neither Ford nor the Ontario Government will pay the $8 a month to regain verification on Twitter after it was stripped from their accounts Thursday, the premier’s office has confirmed.

“The Premier and government will not be paying for Twitter Blue verification services,” spokesperson for Ford’s office Caitlin Clark told CTV News Toronto Friday.

Clark said individual caucus members may make their own decision on whether to subscribe to the services.

On Thursday, Twitter removed the check marks from those who have not paid for the service, implemented in 2022.

The blue-checks were previously used to indicate that the platform has verified they are who they claim to be. Within the new policy, the platform no longer verifies the account's identity before awarding a verified status, creating a greater opportunity for users to impersonate others.

The costs of keeping verification range from US$8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of US$1,000 monthly to verify an organization, plus US$50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account.

The move has left many high-profile users on the platform without the tools to verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system, including journalists, athletes, politicians, and other public figures. Well-known users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyonce, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former U.S. President Donald Trump.

While Twitter offers gold checks for "verified organizations" and gray checks for government organizations and their affiliates, it's not clear how the platform doles these out.

With files from the Associated Press.