Nowhere to hide — X Premium checkmarks can no longer be hidden, even if you never asked for yours

X app on iPhone
(Image credit: Future)

Following the news that X (ye olde Twitter) has started to give some people free access to the X Premium subscription and blue checkmark whether they want it or not, the social network has started to roll out another tweak. And it isn't going to go down well with those who never wanted that checkmark in the first place.

While X had previously allowed people to hide the blue checkmark, preventing people from knowing that they were an X Premium user, that option is now being removed. As a result, those who have been given X Premium but had no intention of paying for it for whatever reason now have no way to hide it.

The upshot? Anyone who would prefer people not to think they've paid for X Premium can no longer hide their status, although it isn't yet known why that move has been made.

Everything check(mark)s out

The Verge reports that some users have started to receive a notification that warns them they can no longer hide the checkmark after making the option available to users last summer. X seemingly understood that people might not want others to think they gave it money, but something has clearly changed.

Elon Musk's ownership of X, nee Twitter, has proven controversial for all manner of reasons and that has led some to refuse to pay to be verified. But X started giving people a free X Premium account if they met certain follower criteria last week, leaving some recipients to hide the checkmark entirely. That's no longer an option.

As for why this change has been made, we can only assume that X wants to make the X Premium subscription seem more enticing — and the more blue checkmarks people see, the more likely they are to want one.

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Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.