Finance Twitter Decides: Blue Check Mark or Not?

What You Need to Know

Financial industry experts and companies have received criticism for opting for a blue check mark on Twitter.
Some financial experts cite security concerns as a reason to pay for the symbol.
Scammer accounts continue to prey on the vulnerable despite Twitter’s rules against impersonation.

Financial services industry players aren’t immune from the debates around Twitter’s move to toss the legacy blue check marks that verified high-profile users and offer the symbol to any user willing to pay for it.

Individuals generally now must pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue to keep or obtain the check mark, or $11 a month if signing up on iOS because of an in-app sales tax.

Twitter says paying subscribers will receive a blue check mark (actually a white check embedded in blue) after their accounts are reviewed to ensure they meet requirements, including platform rules against impersonation.

The platform last week was awash in criticism for those opting to pay for the check marks, including snark and scorn for financial experts doing so. While some high-profile financial Twitter accounts kept their check marks, citing security, others went without.

Concerns over scammer accounts led economic analyst Jim Bianco, Bianco Research president, to pay for the check mark.

“I pay for a blue checkmark for one reason. As a high-profile account in the financial sector, I get a lot of spam accounts, which block me, so I do not see them. Many of them DM their followers, using my name and likeness to try and scam them out of money,” Bianco, who has nearly 328,000 Twitter followers, tweeted early Friday.

“It infuriates me to no end that this happens. But only @elonmusk can fix this,” he continued, referencing Twitter’s multibillionaire owner. “Until then, I will pay $11/month in hoping it differentiates me enough from my scam accounts and saves someone from getting cheated.”

Bianco added in a follow-up Tweet: “For the record, I will NEVER DM anyone asking them for money.”

A check mark remained on Creative Planning President and CEO Peter Mallouk’s Twitter profile as well on Friday. He told ThinkAdvisor via email he made the decision for security purposes, mainly for the two-factor authentication.