On April 1, Twitter will carry through with new owner Elon Musk’s threat to remove existing verification checkmarks from legacy accounts on the platform—part of a push to make users and brands pay for the feature through the Twitter Blue subscription service.

“The Twitter Blue event is yet another wake-up call to the dangers of centralized social media and what it needs to improve to protect users,” Li, co-founder of decentralized social media protocol CyberConnect said.

Li believes that Twitter’s original implementation of blue checkmarks—granted to public figures and brands through an approval process—was a “great first step in establishing public figures as ‘beacons of trust’ that spread credibility to related information and accounts.”