Twitter is planning to introduce paid verification to the platform, as Elon Musk suggests charging verified accounts $8 monthly while granting everyone the possibility to become verified.
Tesla CEO and new Twitter owner Elon tweeted earlier on Sunday that the verification process is currently being ‘revamped’.
Last night, he tweeted saying that “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
Musk created a Twitter thread detailing this further.
“Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity, You will also get: – Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam – Ability to post long video & audio – Half as many ads, And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us, This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators, There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.”
Elon Musk initially said that this will cost around $20, but after an exchange with the American best sellers writer Stephen King, he came up with the $8/month suggestion.
The writer who has the blue Twitter verification tweeted in October 31saying “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*** that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
When a follower told Stephen King that the tweet comes off as ‘a bit off’ since the writer can clearly afford to pay for the verification, King said that it is not about the money instead it was the principle of things.
Musk’s response to the international writer’s tweet was: “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”
Twitter users are displeased by Musk’s decision to make the blue verification this accessible.
When it was first established in 2009, the blue verification’s main goal was to prevent imposters and people from impersonating others, especially high-profile celebrities, public figures, and big politicians.
Dave Vetter, a verified climate journalist responded to Musk’s decision by saying: “Making verification a paid-for service undermines the entire point of verification, which was to establish some base level of trust. So you’re replacing an intended social function with pay-to-win.”
Nu Wexler, former Twitter Head of Global Policy Communications, warned that introducing a fee for blue ticks could make it harder to spot disinformation.
“With disinformation as an issue that a lot of platforms are struggling with, verification is one of the ways that journalists, academic researchers, and some users use to filter out disinformation or low-quality information,” Wexler told the BBC’s Today program.
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