Last year, Elon Musk's social network X - formerly known as Twitter - launched the ability for paid users to conceal their blue checkmarks from others when those checks became primarily a paid feature. The company is making another U-turn: It's starting to notify users that the feature will vanish soon.

Like most of the decisions X has made to date, there is no clear timeline for when the switch will happen. More certain, however, is that this change adds yet one more layer of confusion about what the blue checkmark actually says these days, with it coming fast on the heels of yet one other change: X expanding its blue-check status to more non-paying users based on how many "blue check" followers they themselves have.

Last week, the company removed a portion of its X Premium support page explaining how paid users can hide the checkmarks. This week it's started informing Premium users a little more explicitly.

Before the days of Elon, having a blue check on your handle was the ultimate Twitter humble brag, granted by Twitter itself, subject to the size or impact of your profile on social media or the larger world, simply to help distinguish accounts as not impersonations.

All of that changed with Elon coming in and turning the checks into a premium, paid feature — making the symbol something anyone could buy for a small fee. That is to say, not really valuable at all as a status or verification symbol and perhaps even a little embarrassing.

Yet-there were other benefits to the premium tier, like editing features, the ability to post longer things and extra direct-messaging features-and people didn't always want to admit that they were paying money to a company that had gotten so, so messy under its new owner. Cue: Twitter/X begins offering the ability to hide the checkmarks.

Now finally those not-proud users are coming out of the woods.

Lol noooooooo…. I liked being a X Premium subscriber, but I didn't like the dumb checkmark. Come on @elonmusk, let me hide that I'm paying for your dumb website. pic.twitter.com/9vfarfOySV

— Haje (@Haje) April 11, 2024

The company at large is still grappling with major issues of trust and safety on the platform-impersonators, but also misinformation, harassment, and other abusive content. When Elon made the blue checkmark a money earner, he kinda undermined the point of it trying to combat some of those issues.

X has undertaken several other steps in recent weeks that have further confused exactly what blue checkmarks even are when you see them pop up on the site.

First converted to requiring only paying subscribers to maintain a checkmark, some users appeared still to retain blue checks even when they weren't ponying over a penny to Elon. Later the company did more formally announce the restoration of the blue checkmark for very select top accounts.

Then, this month, the social network started handing out its blue checkmarks to prominent users who have more than 2,500 "verified" followers. The company also started offering the Premium subscription for these users and the Premium+ subscription for users who have more than 5,000 verified followers. Both work on a sort of pyramid scheme, since "verified" becomes a big bucket of paid users, with some that are unpaid, none of which are clearly marked or explained.