Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has been chaotic since its slapdash inception, so it’s solely becoming that his first change will scramble the platform’s social hierarchy.

Last weekend, as Musk’s reign started, information broke that he was implementing a plan to scrap the corporate’s present verification course of, the place a blue verify mark signifies that somebody is who they are saying they’re. Under this new scheme, folks must pay a month-to-month price for verification as a part of the corporate’s Twitter Blue service. Once it rolls out, present verified accounts could have 90 days to pony up or lose their standing.

This proposed shakeup has not gone over effectively with Twitter energy customers. Author Stephen King, for example, tweeted that he can be “gone like Enron” fairly than pay to be verified. Still, Musk appears undeterred. The Blue Check Rapture is coming.

Shifting to a pay-to-play mannequin undermines the unique level of verification. In 2009, Twitter launched its blue checks in response to a lawsuit from St. Louis Cardinals supervisor Tony La Russa, as a approach to reveal it was dedicated to controlling impersonation makes an attempt. (La Russa was peeved that anyone was pretending to be him and cracking jokes at his expense.)

Verification was a approach to preserve outstanding folks and organizations, from celebrities to politicians to multinational companies and authorities companies, comfy on the platform. Early verified accounts embrace the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kim Kardashian. The media has all the time cherished verification. For journalists attempting to get sources to speak or viewers improvement groups attempting to get eyes on a narrative, it is sensible to desire a verified account; it made you appear to be an individual anyone had vetted. Blue checks additionally assured a journalist’s followers that the story they shared was an actual article from the paper and never a hoax.

The blue verify system wasn’t a cure-all for fraud, lies, and different misinformation—Twitter’s lengthy historical past of content material moderation issues is effectively documented, plus it made a number of missteps deciding who and why to confirm through the years—however verification did assist the platform function as a “town square” for sharing data. There’s a purpose why each different main social platform, together with Facebook and TikTok, cribbed the blue badges for their very own networks. They have been at the least reasonably useful.

There’s one more reason why blue checks unfold round platforms: Blue checks make folks really feel essential. They inform the world who sits within the VIP part. (Another purpose why they had been copied by different networks. They all wished a velvet rope.) It seems Musk sees them because the digital equal of a flowery watch or uncommon sneaker. Why not cost for that? Viewed as a premium accent, this would-be clout tax appears to be like logical sufficient.

But the concept of the blue verify as one thing you might purchase to look cool misapprehends its enchantment. Reducing the blue checks to simple, purchasable standing symbols hampers their unique operate, which in flip will take away any non-dorky justification for having them. Now, when anybody should buy the verify, the authentication issue diminishes. All that’s left is that goofy concept that these verify marks bestow clout, which is an more and more shaky proposition.