That means journalists, celebrities and other notable users that choose not to pay $8 per month have lost the familiar check next to their handles on the app. On Thursday, the only users who still have a blue checkmark are those who pay for that privilege.

The change in rules was expected to cause an uptick in subscriptions, which Musk has said is key to future revenue growth for the platform. Twitter’s advertising revenue has declined by 50% between October and March, he tweeted last month.

After initially announcing the plans to remove the old checkmarks, Musk decided to give some verified users more time to decide whether to pay for the service. Currently, only about 1% of its users subscribe to the programme, called Twitter Blue. More than 500 million people use Twitter every month, Musk has said.