Amitabh Bachchan blends humour, sarcasm in take on Twitter blue tick saga

Veteran Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan on Friday made a request for the restoration of the Twitter blue tick with a funny and somewhat sarcastic comment.

Bachchan’s tweet, in the dialect of eastern Uttar Pradesh Hindi, reflected his characteristic humour.

The tweet, when loosely translated, reads: “T 4623 - Hey Twitter brother! Are you listening? Now I even paid...so put back the blue lotus (tick) in front of my name, so that people know that it is Amitabh Bachchan only. I have already made request with folded hands, now should I fall at your feet?”

Other celebrities, including Shah Rukh Khan and Alia Bhatt and cricketers Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, are among those who have for now lost their verified blue ticks from their Twitter accounts.

Twitter has started following a pay model for the verified blue ticks.

Earlier it was announced that the microblogging site will remove the verified check-mark status of accounts that Twitter had verified before Elon Musk’s takeover unless they have subscribed to Twitter Blue or the business-focused Twitter Verified Organisations plan, Variety reported.The blue tick served as a way of protecting well-known individuals from impersonation and tackling false information.

“On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks. To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue,” Twitter had said in a post in March.

Twitter first introduced the blue check mark system in 2009 to help users identify that celebrities, politicians, companies and brands, news organisations and other accounts “of public interest” were genuine and not impostors or parody accounts. The company didn’t previously charge for verification.

Musk launched Twitter Blue with the check-mark badge as a premium perk within two weeks of his takeover of the company last year.