Twitter blue tick cull - The Pope, JK Rowling and Ant and Dec among hundreds of thousands losing their verification

Twitter blue tick cull - The Pope, JK Rowling and Ant and Dec among hundreds of thousands losing their verification

Twitter has finally started removing “legacy” blue ticks from verified accounts, with some of the world’s best-known figures losing the verification sign.

The Pope, author JK Rowling, football star Cristiano Ronaldo, US rapper Jay-Z, and TV stars Ant and Dec have lost their blue ticks on the social networking site, along with the Conservative and Labour parties.

Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue tick system, many of them athletes, musicians, journalists and other public figures.

The only blue ticks left will be those with a Twitter Blue subscription, which costs up to £11 a month in the UK, or those who are affiliated with the company.

But, unlike the “legacy” blue ticks introduced soon after Twitter launched to help people know which accounts were legitimate, the platform will no longer verify the accounts to ensure they are who they say they are.

Accounts with different coloured check marks will keep those – gold indicates they are a verified business, while gray means they represent a government, multilateral organization or official.