Twitter Blue Checks Purchased By The Taliban Are Being Removed After BBC Report

Jaap Arraigns/Sipa USA via AP Images

Twitter appears to be removing blue checks on a number of accounts following a BBC report this week on Taliban officials purchasing verification badges on the platform.

Verification on Twitter is now part of a monthly subscription fee, one of the changes Elon Musk implemented shortly after purchasing the company. Two accounts highlighted by the BBC though now appear to have lost their badges.

Taliban officials Abdul Haq Hammad and Hedayatullah Hedayat both previously had blue checks, but as of Tuesday, neither account is verified. The accounts carry more than 300,000 followers collectively. An image of the latter account, sporting nearly 180,000 followers, with its blue check was captured by Daily Mail.

Screenshot via Daily Mail

The BBC’s original report claimed Taliban supporters have also been buying into the Twitter Blue verification program.

From the BBC:

Prominent Taliban supporters have acquired the blue tick too.

Muhammad Jalal, who previously identified as a Taliban official, praised the new owner of Twitter on Monday, declaring that Elon Musk was “making Twitter great again.”

The presence of the hard-line Islamists on Twitter has been a topic of controversy for some time.

In October 2021, former US President Donald Trump – who was suspended from the platform after his supporters stormed the US Capitol – said: “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced.”

Under Musk’s Twitter Blue program, neither of the Taliban-affiliated accounts pointed out by the BBC would be eligible for blue check verifications. As state-affiliated accounts, as the Taliban has become the governing body in Afghanistan, they would be given a grey-check verification instead.

Under Twitter Blue, grey checks are given to government officials while businesses can receive gold checks and individuals get blue badges.