- Charan joins a long list of celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan,
Virat Kohli , Deepika Padukone, andRahul Gandhi who lost their ‘Blue ticks’. - Jr NTR or Tarak, SS Rajamouli – with over six million followers each, still have their blue ticks.
- The Pope, Oprah Winfrey, and singer Beyonce lost their verifications, but Musk personally paid for three celebrities.
Charan, who has over three million followers on Twitter, joins a long list of celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Virat Kohli, Deepika Padukone and Rahul Gandhi to lose the coveted ‘Blue tick’ on their Twitter accounts. Many celebrities have refused to pay a fee that Musk had imposed to verify the accounts of celebrities.
Blue ticks can differentiate the actual accounts of celebrities from the many fan-made and fake accounts made in their name.
Rajamouli, Rana retain their blue ticks
The other Naatu Naatu star, Jr NTR, or Tarak, the director of RRR, SS Rajamouli – with over six million followers each – still have their blue ticks indicating that they might have paid Musk’s fee.
The star of Bahubali, Rana Daggubati, has a blue tick, and Prabhas is not on Twitter.
The others who did not bother are — KGF fame Yash and Pusha actor Allu Arjun have also lost their blue ticks along with South heavyweight Rajnikanth.
Even superstar Chiranjeevi, Charan's father and Arjun's uncle, who joined Twitter during the pandemic, lost his blue tick status. So did his Tamil counterpart Kamal Hassan who came back with a bang to silver screens with the recent superhit Vikram late last year.
South heroines like Samantha Ruth Prabhu, with over 10 million followers, and Nayantara, with over 20,000 followers too lost their blue ticks.
Many top cricketers like M S Dhoni and Rohit Sharma also did not bother to pay the price to retain their ticks, and neither did Twitteractive pulp fiction writer, Chetan Bhagat.
There are only three exceptions
Many international celebrities lost their blue ticks, including the Pope, celebrity TV host Oprah Winfrey, and singer Beyonce.
Rihanna and Taylor Swift still have blue ticks, but their payment status is not verified. actress Halle Berry, however, tweeted, "Me joining you all tomorrow unverified," indicating she will not pay for the Blue badge. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, also lost his blue tick.
But looks like even Musk defers to the celebrity might of a few titans, including the King of Horror, Stephen King. Incidentally, King has been criticizing the verification payment and insisted that “It’s a matter of principle.”
The other two celebrities that Musk is personally paying for are Captain Kirk of Star Trek, William Statner and basketball legend, LeBron James.
(With inputs from IANS, Neha Das and Ananya Tawakley)
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