Features come and go, and when it comes to the internet, companies need to move fast.
This is because the competition is harsh, and that technology evolves as the trends evolve. X, the platform once known as Twitter, has given users the ability to obtain the blue checkmark.
Then, due to the controversies that followed, X started allowing users to hide their blue checkmarks.
This time, X is taking that away.
X wants its Premium users, who paid to have the blue checkmark, to no longer be able to hide their "paid" checkmarks.
According to a notification received by multiple users, X wants to eliminate the ability for Premium users to hide their blue checkmarks.
The blue checkmark was once a status symbol.
It was originally a form of verification and implicit status, which helped distinguish accounts as genuine and not impersonations.
Twitter was pioneering the symbol, before pretty much other platforms followed.
But following Elon Musk's acquisition of the platform, the billionaire made the blue check to lose some of its luster.
After X shifted to a paid verification system, the blue checkmark then became an indicator that the account holder paid for a Premium subscription.
Because anyone can have the blue checkmark by just paying a few dollars, the feature was then abused by scammers and online impersonators.
And as a result, some legitimate users with blue checks became the target of online harassment or mass blocking.
Long story short, following Musk's takeover, the paid subscription resulted in a wave of impersonators.
This turned the blue checkmark from an icon, to become something of an embarrassment to anyone who is not an overt Musk fan.
Read: Twitter Removes Its Legacy Verified Program: The Verified Checkmark Is Only For Those Who Pay
The platform once tried to re-introduce the blue checkmark as a symbol, by giving accounts with more than a million followers the blue checkmark for free.
X eventually pushed the blue checkmark on accounts with much smaller followings too.
This happened earlier, when the social network started handing out blue checkmarks to influential users with more than 2,500 "verified" followers, and that later, the company also started offering its Premium subscription to these users and Premium+ subscription to users with more than 5,000 verified followers.
By eliminating the ability for Premium users to hide their blue checkmark, X's move is adding one more layer of confusion around what the blue checkmark actually means.
By operating a kind of pyramid scheme, X is making the term "verified" a word to describe a large bucket of paid users, with some that are unpaid, none of which are clearly marked or explained.
In other words, X is making it even more confusing for some ordinary users to really understand what blue checkmarks actually mean when they see them on the site.