  Twitter has been accused of a liberal bias in its account verification and
content moderation policies. Elon Musk pledged, after his acquisition of the
company, to promote free speech on the platform by overhauling verification and
moderation policies. These events sparked fears of a rise in influence of
contentious actors -- notably from the political right. In this article, I use
a publicly released list of 138k Twitter accounts that purchased blue check
verification during the open window of November 9-November 11, 2022. I retrieve
4.9m tweets from a sample of politically contentious accounts. I then compare
engagement on contentious user posts before and after the Musk acquisition. I
find that the period following the Musk acquisition saw a substantive increase
in post engagement. There is no additional increase following blue tick
verification. I explain the findings with reference to an increase in activity
by a newly sympathetic user base.
