Why did Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Amitabh Bachchan, Virat Kohli lose their Twitter ‘blue ticks’?

Bollywood celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Alia Bhatt, and Amitabh Bachchan have a massive following on social media. On Twitter, Salman Khan has over 45 million followers, while Shah Rukh Khan has 43.4 million followers. Amitabh Bachchan, who is quite active on Twitter, has a whopping 48.4 million followers on the micro-blogging site. However, you may have been surprised to see that celebs such as Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and many others have lost the blue tick mark on Twitter suddenly. Want to know why? Keep scrolling!

Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt and many other celebrities have lost their verified blue tick marks and it’s not due to some glitch on the site. Due to a recent development, on Thursday, Twitter removed the legacy verified blue ticks from all accounts. From now on, the only individual Twitter profiles who have verified blue tick marks are those paying for Twitter Blue, and the subscription reportedly costs USD 8/month via the web and USD 11/month through in-app payment on iOS and Android.

The blue tick mark earlier came in handy to identify official accounts of celebrities and notable personalities, brands, companies and news organizations, and helped distinguish them from impostors on the micro-blogging platform. Earlier in March, Twitter posted, "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.”

Not just Bollywood celebrities, cricketers such as Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, politicians such as CM Yogi Adityanath, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi have also lost the verified blue tick on Twitter, due to the recent development.