Why did top celebs like Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Ram Charan lose their blue tick on Twitter?

Top celebrities including Rajinikanth, Mammootty, Kamal Haasan, Ram Charan, and several other well-known personalities lost their blue tick on Twitter.

Hyderabad: The country woke up with the most bizarre thing on Twitter after influential figures in politics, cricket, and the film industry lost their verified blue ticks. Celebrities from the South including Rajinikanth, Mammootty, Kamal Haasan, Ram Charan, and many others have also lost their blue tick on Twitter. Elon Musk on April 20 declared that the blue tick would be removed from Twitter accounts on non-payment of subscription service.

The blue ticks of the celebrities were removed since they did not pay the subscription fees for verified status. Even celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Virat Kohli, Yogi Adityanath, Rahul Gandhi, and other famous personalities have lost their blue tick on Twitter. Celebrities must now pay USD 8 every month to regain their verified status. While some have written on Twitter that they do not want to pay to be recognized, others have tweeted amusingly saying 'bye bye blue tick'.

The 'Blue tick' which had not previously been charged, was introduced in 2009 to make it easier for users to recognize celebrities, politicians, companies, and brands, as well as authentic accounts of public interests. Earlier, actors Jayam Ravi and Trisha Krishnan's blue ticks were also removed after changing their names. Trisha and Jayam altered their names to the character names from the movie PS 2, Kundhavai and Arunmozhi Varman respectively, as part of the movie's promotions.

This, however, led to losing the verified mark of their official accounts. On her Twitter handle, Trisha revealed that she had lost her verified mark and added, "they are refusing to let us purchase it because we changed our names. We tried doing that as well this morning. It says suspicious activity because we changed our names."