Blue checks for accounts that aren't public figures/corporate accounts, were effectively medals awarded for playing the Twitter game well. Paying for that meda

Blue checks for accounts that aren't public figures/corporate accounts, were effectively medals awarded for playing the Twitter game well. Paying for that medal dilutes its value to almost nothing. It also changes the incentives for those that pay, vs those who received the status from Twitter directly. The fact that Stephen King and Lebron James were 'gifted' paid blue checks after publicly rejecting them kinda says it all: it's not about democratizing reach, it's a pay-to-play scheme, but the actual popular kids aren't paying a cent. If you want some evidence, take a look at the types of accounts that have the "paid for" checkmark. The majority of them are shilling courses, AI, crypto, MLMs or conspiracies.