By Tuesday afternoon, Elon Musk had posted a thread on Twitter outlining his plan to charge $8 a month , as part of a plan to fight fake accounts and squeeze revenue from the company he bought for $44 billion.
Along with the coveted blue check, Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to post longer video and audio clips. They will also have half as many ads in their feeds and be able to get around paywalls from news publishers “willing to work” with the platform, and their tweets will get priority in replies, mentions and search results.
The company also plans to expand access to its edit function. The edit feature, currently available to so-called Twitter Blue users who pay $4.99 a month, will be opened to the rest of users for free, one of the people said. That change could be implemented as soon as this week, the person said.
The plan to charge for verification has polarized users, with some people who currently have the white check mark inside a light blue field saying they won’t pay to keep it. Some have publicly tweeted in favor of the new business model, concurring with Musk that it will help weed out “bots” or spam accounts.
Twitter has historically used blue verification badges to identify high-profile users who may be at risk of impersonation -- people like journalists, politicians and activists -- and has never charged for the badge.
Musk called the current setup a “lords and peasants system,” adding that users who pay $8 a month will also get other perks like “half as many ads” and “priority in replies, mentions & search.”
Critics say that giving verified users priority will mean that users who don’t pay will have their posts diminished or silenced. “Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a $8/mo subscription plan,” tweeted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York.
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