the eccentric Elon Musk she’s done her thing again with her favorite toy, the social network Chirping. On Monday, it surprised its user base with something more than unusual: the traditional blue bird no longer represents the platformin one of his many controversial moves since acquiring the company in October 2022.

To top it all off, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX was sued for creating a pyramid scheme with Dogecoin, as it is accused of manipulate the price of cryptocurrencywhich he acknowledges he owns and has never sold, so no upside like he’s had in the last few hours after being the visible face of Twitter.

Specifically, Dogecoin investors filed a $258 billion lawsuit against Musk last year over his alleged role in championing Dogecoin as a trusted cryptocurrency. making it rise by 36,000%. On Friday, his team of lawyers called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, calling the allegations “a work of fanciful fantasy”.

In any case, the effect of Doge’s reign on Twitter caused Dogecoin prices to skyrocket from $0.07 to $0.10, 30% growth which has attracted the attention of thousands of investors around the world, demonstrating the power that a personality like Elon Musk has to change the value of cryptocurrency.

THE surprise appearance of the Doge icon instead of the blue birdwhose name is Larry, in the top left menu of the web, has done nothing but generate all kinds of speculation about it.

The most skeptics indicate that Elon Musk wanted to coincide this movement with April 1, Day of the Innocents in the Anglo-Saxon community, which would have been postponed to 3, leaving the meme as something out of place but which had an equally controversial effect.

Furthermore, they also point out that Musk is actually trying to “bury” the Dogecoin manipulation lawsuit thanks to this move, making this reference appear in place of their legal battle when searching for “Elon Musk” and “Doge” in the browser. .

This move is not unusual for Musk, who often promotes cryptocurrencies. He himself was the architect of Dogecoin which hit all-time highs in May 2021 when he hosted Saturday Night Live and mentioned the coin on the air, causing it to soar to $0.74 and then rapidly plunge.

The Doge’s appearance as a Twitter symbol was met with disbelief and little laughter overall, pointing out the childish behavior of Elon Muskmuch questioned by his latest decisions with the platform which for some experts is showing signs of little life.

In fact, many users mocked Musk for his supposed attempt to be funny, which he didn’t quite achieve and which still contributed to his image of using memes in an unoriginal and even stale way. “It’s very embarrassing,” says one user, while another sarcastically criticizes how “epic” it was to “use the remaining Twitter employees” to make Doge the new face of the brand.

Twitter blue tilde controversy

Since last Saturday, April 1, the social network has begun to remove the verified symbol from those users who do not pay for the subscription to Blue Twitterincluding celebrities, journalists and other public figures and many of the companies and organizations with the largest number of followers on the microblogging platform.

This has plunged the social network into a great mess, as it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the real or official accounts of organizations from others that seek parody or directly contribute to disinformation.

From now on, all those people who want to get the blue check have to pay $8 a month, or $11 if they do it from an iPhone device, as Apple’s App Store takes a 30% commission on purchases that run within the applications they host, and Twitter plans to charge users for this fee.

In the case of companies, to be verified it’s even more expensive. As an organization, Twitter Blue’s service costs more than $1,000 a month.

Twitter Blue subscribers enjoy benefits such as increased visibility for their posts, be able to edit your tweets, post higher quality videos, a reading mode and change your name on Twitter and choose to show your name or profile picture. But many are unwilling to pay for something that until now was free.

Elon Musk himself had to pay for his Twitter Blue subscription in the last few hours, since he hadn’t done it until now.

The number of users who have demonstrated against this payment system has increased exponentially in the last few hours. Many verified users, such as basketball star Lebron Jameshe also joined the boycott initiated by organizations such as the The White House or the New York Timeswho announced that he does not want to maintain his status on the social network.

Other US media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Politico and Vox have admitted they will not pay for Twitter Blue because they believe it would an advertising expense, not associated with credibility. Despite these pressure measures, Twitter has not contemplated: The medium’s main account of the New York Times currently has no verification.

In this context of widespread disenchantment, there is a group of Twitter users who, while maintaining the blue tilde they already had before the arrival of Twitter Blue, do not enjoy its benefits. This is the case of users such as actor and comedian David Pareja, who shared a post on his account explaining his case.

In the next few hours or days it will be possible to confirm whether these are specific errors or whether Twitter simply hasn’t yet had enough time to remove the ‘blue check’ from all those users who had it, but decided not to pay.