X is giving free blue checks to users who have more than 2,500 “verified” followers, which are people who subscribe to X Premium. Popular posters will get a blue check, but not everyone is happy about it: People are now frantically posting to make it clear that they didn’t buy a blue check, but rather the blue check was foisted upon them.

“Some personal news: I’m now a serial small business founder in Arizona who posts about fatherhood, faith and what it takes to get a roofing company to $100 million ARR,” former BuzzFeed editor — and newly minted blue check — Tom Gara posted on X.

“This is punishment for posting too much,” wrote another reluctant blue check, Business Insider senior correspondent Katie Notopoulos.

Back in days of yore, Twitter’s blue check indicated that a user was influential in some way. Now, this may sound foreign in the age of the paid blue check, but believe me: I was there, way back in the olden times of 2022, when X was Twitter, and Twitter had real advertisers, rather than a bunch of ads for drop-shipped AliExpress products. Back then, blue checks actually helped us determine if public figures are who they say they are. So if someone was popular on Twitter, perhaps because they’re a celebrity, an influencer or a journalist, they would get a blue check, which could also help reduce the spread of misinformation.

Going forward, all 𝕏 accounts with over 2500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5000 will get Premium+ for free

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2024

Until today, having a blue check meant one of a few things: You’re desperate to feel important, you really want to use X’s premium features, you’re being impersonated so much that it’s worth giving Elon Musk $8 a month, or you’re a crypto spam bot.

Now, we’re not quite back to square one, but Elon has, in fact, reinvented the original purpose of the blue check. And yet, you still won’t be able to distinguish a “real” blue check from that reply guy who really wants you to buy their memecoin.

Elon Musk’s Twitter a year later: Everything you need to know

Twitter will kill ‘legacy’ blue checks on April 1