BUFFALO, N.Y. -- For years, a blue checkmark has let Twitter users know the person they are following or retweeting is in fact that person.

However, that's no longer the case.

"I don't think it was a surprise in the sense of the people, the reaction as far as being frustrated," American University Communications Professor Jason Mollica said.

While some official government accounts for agencies and elected officials saw their blue checkmarks replaced with gray ones, many other politicians, especially at state and local levels, no longer have the quick proof their accounts are real. Mollica, who teaches social media, said it does present a new problem.

"Elected officials have to be a little more strategic in a lot of ways because even though they may have been on Capitol Hill for a long time, 'x' amount of years, they still need people to know who they are because they're always trying to find new voters," Mollica said.

Political analyst Jack O'Donnell, of O'Donnell & Associates, said Twitter had become a preferred platform for many politicians to quickly spread the message. He said even though not every cross-section of the voting pool is always represented on the site, people with outsized influence who are on it make it a useful tool.

"That used to be your block club leader. That used to be the guy who owned the corner store or the woman who worked in the library. Those were those trusted voices. For awhile, some of those voices were collected on Twitter and I think that's gone now," O'Donnell said.

The platform does allow users to subscribe and pay for Twitter Blue in order to get a checkmark and engagement prioritization. Mollica noted, however, that's not a simple solution as many users, particularly those with left-leaning political views, are actively rallying against and some even boycotting the blue checkmark.

"There are all levels of criticism that can be lobbied towards a representative or a government organization however, it's going to come down to how well they know their audience," Mollica said.

O'Donnell said the internet and social media will likely remain an important tool for politicians, pointing to how Donald Trump mobilized supporters on Twitter and Barack Obama on Facebook before that.

"Really in politics a lot of this is the quest of who's going to figure out the next thing and the campaigns that figure out the next thing are the ones that are going to win," he said.