Elon Musk, Spacex and Tesla have decided to make $8 per month to allow users to get a blue checkmark on their social media platforms. “This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” Musk explained, adding that “it is the only way to defeat the bots and trolls.” However, many Twitter users are unhappy about the announced charge.
Twitter To Charge $8 Per Month For Account Verification
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and chief Twitter officer announced Tuesday on Twitter that he will charge $8 per monthly for users of Twitter to obtain a blue verification mark. This checkmark is currently available free to all. After several days of debate on Twitter about his purchase of Twitter, Musk made the announcement.
In a followed-up tweet, he explained that the price will be “adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.”
Musk further detailed that for $8 a month, users 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.”
Twitter’s new chief executive added:
Twitter will have a new revenue stream that can be used to pay content creators.
Some said that they were open to the idea of Twitter offering content creators a payment. One user wrote: “Creator payments are huge to incentivize content creation. Love this idea.” Musk replied: “Absolutely essential. Creators need to make a living!”
Musk had considered charging $20 per person before settling on an $8/month fee. Many Twitter users were not happy with the suggestion. Stephen King, the famous author of fiction said he’d leave the site if this charge was brought forward. Musk responded by explaining that Twitter can’t rely solely on advertisers. They will have to make the payments. He also stressed that “it is the only way to defeat the bots and trolls.”
The pro-bitcoin CEO of Microstrategy, Michael Saylor, commented on Musk’s idea of charging $8 a month, tweeting: “The bots won’t like this.” The Tesla CEO replied:
The bots will be destroyed. A paid Blue account that engages in spam/scam will be removed. This basically raises Twitter’s crime cost by many orders of magnitude.
The current Twitter verification process is free, but the account must be “authentic, notable and active” to receive a blue checkmark, according to the company’s website as of Nov. 1.
However, not everyone is happy about the $8/month cost. “$8 for something that isn’t even ad-free is so funny,” one user wrote. Another explained that his number one rule on the internet that has “never been successfully broken is to charge for something that was previously free.” A third user wrote: “Soon it’s gonna be cool to not have the checkmark.”
Philip Lewis is a Huffpost senior editor on the front page.
It is fundamentally incorrect to think that this is how verification should work. A blue check has been perceived as a status symbol for some time when really it’s just supposed to tell you if a page is authentic or not.
A Twitter blue checkmark would cost $8 per month. And, what do you think of Musk’s plan to reward content creators? Comment below to let us know your thoughts.
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