After eliminating almost all the blue badges obtained with the old verification system, Twitter has restored the famous check to many accounts with over a million followers, even if the affected users have not subscribed. Also restored the gold badge to the New York Times account.
Are lords and peasants returning?
As of April 20, Twitter had begun eliminating badges awarded based on the old requirements. Elon Musk said in November that it's a system that divides users into lords and peasants .
Surprisingly, three celebrities (Stephen King, LeBron James, and William Shatner) have once again obtained the previous blue badge without having paid anything. Over the weekend, other famous people received their lost badge. Based on an initial analysis, it seems that the Californian company has restored the badge to accounts with over one million followers.
There are however some exceptions. Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, got the blue badge even though he has around 295,000 followers. No badge instead for the actor Ryan Reynolds with over 21 million followers. Deleting and restoring badges is done manually, so this may change in the next few days.
Many US publishers had criticized the new verification system that requires Twitter Blu subscription , saying that they would not pay anything. The New York Times immediately lost the gold badge, but it was restored over the weekend. Same fate for the BBC gold badge. It is not known why Twitter decided to give away badges to non-subscription accounts.
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. Elon Musk said in November 
that it's a system that divides users into lords and peasants .
