A day after announcing plans to charge a monthly fee to verify Twitter’s blue tick, the social media company’s new owner Elon Musk said “you get what you pay for” and that Twitter is “simply the most interesting place on the Internet.” “Twitter is simply the most interesting place on the Internet. That’s why you’re reading this tweet right now,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday. He previously tweeted: “Being attacked by both the right and the left at the same time is a good sign” and “you get what you pay for”.
Musk announced that the verification blue checkmark in front of a user’s name that verifies an account would be charged eight dollars a month, sparking outrage and disbelief among some longtime users. Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired Twitter on October 27 for a whopping $44 billion. He also fired four top executives at the social media company, including CEO Parag Agrawal and legal director Vijayi Gadde. “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” he tweeted on Tuesday, adding that the price is adjusted by country in proportion to purchasing power parity.
Blue checkmark
With that price, he said, users will also get priority in replies, mentions and searches, which he says is necessary to beat spam/fraud, as well as the ability to post long-form video and audio, half as many ads and paywalls. bypass for publishers willing to work with a social media company. Musk, 51, said monthly payments from users for blue ticks would also give Twitter a source of revenue to reward content creators. Under the name, there will be a secondary label for someone who is publicly active, which is already the case with politicians, he added.
A blue checkmark means that a particular account is verified because it is prominent in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category. Twitter implemented the system in 2009 after facing a lawsuit accusing it of not doing enough to prevent fraudulent accounts. However, Musk’s decision to charge for blue ticks has not gone down well with many longtime users, including author Stephen King, who has nearly seven million followers on the platform. “$20 a month to keep my blue check? he tweeted on Monday, followed by expletives. They should pay me. If this is implemented, I’m gone like Enron. Later, in response, King wrote: [it’s not the money, it’s the principle of the matter.
Musk responded to King with his most explicit endorsement yet of the proposal to charge for account verification. [We] have to pay the bills somehow! According to him, Twitter cannot completely rely on advertisers. How about $8? Kasturi Shankar, a blue-tick user whose Twitter bio describes her as an actress, activist, lawyer, writer, quiz-taker, dancer, foodie and “traveller,” wrote: “Way to dilute your blue-tick verification. The real people who matter will leave and take with them the users you need to justify the platform.
When businesses and media buy blue ticks, they try to monetize their tweets in return. Twitter will become a billboard.” Another user named David Rothschild asked: “So the more money you spend, the better your speech?” “Faux populism from billionaires who just want to cut taxes and regulations for the rich while crushing the rights of working people to the core social security and the bargaining necessary to be healthy, productive and have meaningful opportunity is a particularly outrageous type of faux populism,” said a user who goes by the blue handle @DavMicRot.
Another verified user, who goes by @Rubiu5, asked, “What happens if a random user pays $8 and changes their display name to Elon Musk, uses the same profile picture, and starts tweeting as if it were you? There are verified checkmarks so people know they are following a real person, the user pointed out. Responding to the barrage of criticism, Musk said Twitter speaks to the inner masochist in all of us. “To all complainers please continue to complain but it will cost $8,” he tweeted. In a follow-up tweet, Musk shared a link to a popular British sitcom called “Argument.” In the famous Monty Python comedy troupe sketch, a character played by Michael Pali becomes enraged after paying for a five-minute argument with John Cleese. Totally stole the idea of charging insults and arguments from Monty Python tbh, Musk wrote.
