Twitter's blue tick was once a status symbol. The tick meant that users had been verified for who they said they actually were — it gave weight to their voices and indicated authenticity.

But Twitter CEO Elon Musk turned this system upside down by rolling out Twitter Blue, the app's subscription service, in November to garner revenue — and now, anyone who pays for the service gets verified even if they may be an imposter or may have zero followers.

A Mashable report citing researcher Travis Brown showed that at the end of March, Twitter Blue had a total of over 4.4 lakh subscribers. Half of these users had fewer than 1,000 followers — that's more than 2 lakh subscribers. Over 78,000 had fewer than 100 subscribers, while over 2,200 had no followers at all.

Last week, Musk began removing verification tick marks from legacy user accounts that didn't sign up for Twitter Blue, including media organisations and popular celebrities. Within 24 hours, the app descended into chaos as fake accounts grew rampant and false information spread.

For instance, a fake Twitter account of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was granted a blue tick. The account announced the death of RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo amid the ongoing armed conflict in the country. That tweet was seen by nearly a million people before the account was taken down.

In another instance, a Disney Junior UK account that was sharing offensive content received a gold verification badge before being suspended.

Meanwhile, New York City’s official government account lost its verification. Another account bearing a similar username claimed to be the real one. However, Twitter later restored the official account's grey mark, which refers to a government organisation.

The Twitter Blue rollout also created a lot of confusion among users. Last week, several high profile users lost their verification, including Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, Shah Rukh Khan and Virat Kohli. Later, in a U-turn, Twitter restored the checkmarks for many of these celebrities but left some out indicating a lack of coherent policy.

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What's concerning is that accounts belonging to celebrities who are no more, such as Kobe Bryant and Anthony Bourdain also received the verification badge.

Celebrities like Stephen King, Lebron James and William Shatner, who opposed Twitter Blue, were given the blue tick without their consent. Musk was the one who paid for them.

As per experts, this can have legal consequences. Someone who receives a blue checkmark without their permission can file a false endorsement lawsuit.

Despite all this, will Elon Musk stick to this new system or go back to the old verification system? When CNBC-TV18 reached out to Twitter, they simply replied with a poo emoji.