Those with over 2,500 verified followers – people already paying for X Premium – have been given premium features for free

X, formerly Twitter, is giving blue ticks to its most “influential” users in a significant change of policy.

Those with over 2,500 verified followers – people already paying for X Premium – have been given premium features for free.

As well as the blue tick, the users will see fewer advertisements on X.

The social media platform also announced it was clearing bots so people may notice follower numbers dropping.

Blue ticks were originally a way to verify users were who they claimed to be, but they became a paid-for feature after Elon Musk purchased the site.

Nonetheless, according to messages received by people who have been given the features, it is now being given out without cost if a person is an “influential member of the community”.

Premium users also see their tweets ranked higher when replying to others, and it lets them to apply for revenue sharing from adverts on the site.

In the meantime, people with over 5,000 verified followers have been given free access to Premium+, which removes almost all adverts and ranks their tweets even higher when replying to another person.

It comes after Musk announced the feature in late March.

Before X was purchased by Musk, the blue tick was a badge of verification given for free by the platform.

The blue tick was once seen as a marker of a person’s authoritativeness on the site, as only a few people could become verified, such as celebrities, government workers and journalists.

Under Musk, the blue tick instead became a symbol showing that an account had subscribed to X Premium – previously known as Twitter Blue – with a verification process attached to that payment.

But now it has become a combination of the two – with a person simply seen as prominent if they are followed by enough people with a checkmark of their own.