Elon Musk Suggests Charging $8 per Month for Twitter Verification

Elon Musk received an earful from Twitter energy customers concerning the prospect that the corporate would start charging verified accounts $20 monthly in an effort to retain their blue check-mark badges — and the world’s richest particular person puzzled out loud if perhaps $8 monthly was a extra palatable choice.

Musk had deliberate to jack up the value of the Twitter Blue subscription plan from $4.99 to $19.99 monthly, and would make the service the one technique to retain verified-user standing, the Verge reported Sunday. Customers would have 90 days to hitch the subscription program or have their verified standing revoked, per the report.

Author Stephen King, amongst many others who weighed in on the topic, didn’t mince phrases in reacting to the thought. “$20 a month to maintain my blue test?” King tweeted Monday to his 6.9 million followers. “Fuck that, they need to pay me. If that will get instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” He adopted up later by saying, “It ain’t the cash, it’s the precept of the factor.”

Late Monday evening, Musk replied to King, saying, “We have to pay the payments in some way! Twitter can’t rely totally on advertisers. How about $8?”

Musk continued, “I’ll clarify the rationale in longer type earlier than that is carried out. It’s the solely technique to defeat the bots & trolls.”

On Monday, Musk additionally modified the outline in his bio from “Chief Twit” to “Twitter Grievance Hotline Operator.” In SEC filings, Musk recognized himself as CEO — after firing earlier chief exec Parag Agrawal and different prime Twitter managers — and dissolved the earlier Twitter board after taking the corporate personal. Musk closed the $44 billion takeover of Twitter on Oct. 27, after six months of haggling and Musk repeatedly making an attempt to again out of the deal (which he mentioned he’s “clearly overpaying” for).

Twitter first launched verified accounts in 2009. The purpose was to not generate income however to extend belief within the social community by offering a visible signifier that notable account holders, equivalent to celebrities, politicians, firms, leisure manufacturers, information organizations and different accounts “of public curiosity” had been the true deal and never impostor or parody accounts.

In asserting the binding deal to purchase Twitter again on April 25, Musk proclaimed that he wished to “make Twitter higher than ever by enhancing the product with new options, making the algorithms open supply to extend belief, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all people.” Apparently he meant authenticating all people who’re prepared to pay Musk a month-to-month payment to assist him defray the price of working Twitter.