X removes option to hide blue verification checkmarks
Social media giant X has announced its decision to discontinue the feature that allows users to hide their blue verification badges. The company began notifying users about the change on Thursday. "The hide your checkmark feature of X Premium is going away soon," X stated in its notification to users. Some users were unhappy with this change, as they didn't want the blue check to appear on their accounts.
X's latest initiative: Blue badges for influential users
X has also launched a new initiative to assign blue badges to the profiles of "influential" users. These are individuals who have garnered at least 2,500 followers and are also subscribers of the platform's premium service. Elon Musk hinted that this change was designed to benefit these users. "Going forward, all X accounts with over 2,500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5,000 will get Premium+ for free," he said in a post.
X expands Grok AI chatbot access to Premium subscribers
Last week, X expanded the availability of its Grok chatbot to include Premium subscribers. Earlier, the ChatGPT rival was exclusively available to Premium+ subscribers who paid $16 monthly or $168 annually. Grok offers two interaction modes: "Regular mode" and "Fun mode." It can also summarize trending news stories, create headlines as well as summarize stories.
