Three words “Hack” get Twitter users blue ticks for free – but there’s a catch

For a time, Twitter CEO Elon Musk amused himself by telling people who complained about changes to the platform to pay $8 for their “verified” blue ticks, as ad revenue for the site crumbles. A new ‘hack’ has given people a way to give themselves a blue tick for free, should they want to be associated with paying for the tick, which many celebrities don’t.

The “hack” is simple. All you have to do is write the words “former blue check” in your bio and like magic, or Candyman, the blue check will appear.

The trick, as IFLScience has confirmed working for previously verified users under the old blue tick system, doesn’t seem to work for users who have never been verified.

There are also reports from some former blue checking accounts that the blue tick appears every time they edit their bio, before disappearing shortly afterwards. This didn’t work when we tried it on a personal account, but did when we changed the bio off IFLScience Twitter account. However, this would make more sense as to why the error occurs, as having blue checks turned on by repeating a banned phrase in your bio doesn’t do much good. Old legacy verified users remain classy from other accounts in Twitter’s code, even if their blue check is hidden. Changing the bios may be what triggers a short error.

The tick seems to disappear quite quickly, but is the last in a long line of clumsy mistakes which has appeared on Twitter since Musk took over, making extensive changes to the timeline, algorithm and verification system using a greatly reduced team.