Elon Musk Confirms $8 Monthly Fee for Twitter Accounts to be Verified
18:46 GMT 01.11.2022 (Updated: 12:57 GMT 14.04.2023)
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Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, confirmed widespread rumors on Tuesday, announcing that Verified accounts will be charged $8 a month to retain their blue checkmark badges indicating their authenticity.
"Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bulls***," Musk tweeted. "Power to the people! Blue for $8/month," adding that the price would be adjusted by country according to their nation's purchasing power parity (PPP).
Musk also listed several other features that subscribers to the Blue service would get, including "priority in replies, mentions and search[es]," which he said is "essential to defeat spam/scam." Subscribers will also get the ability to post "long video and audio" , they would see only half as many ads as before, and would gain the ability to bypass paywalls with "publishers willing to work with us."
He added that this would "give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators."
Rumors have swirled that Musk was planning to charge Twitter users for their Verified status since he finalized the deal to buy the social media giant last week, although most claims estimated a far higher monthly fee.
Verification is used to identify the accounts of public figures such as politicians, celebrities, and journalists, as well as institutions and corporations, as being the authentic accounts of those entities. The feature was first implemented in 2009 in response to a lawsuit over a fake account that Tony la Russa, then the manager of the Arizona Cardinals professional baseball team, said was being allowed to impersonate him.
Twitter paused the feature in 2017 after protests over it giving a blue check to Jason Kessler, a self-described leader of the “alt-right” who planned the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which drew thousands of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and fascists of other stripes. That rally resulted in widespread violence, including a car ramming attack into a crowd by an attendee that killed a counter-demonstrator. Verification was later revived in late 2021.
Musk bought Twitter last week for $44 billion. He has pledged to combat spam bots and make the app financially solvent again, as well as to protect free speech on the platform. While he has said that former US President Donald Trump should not remain banned from Twitter forever, he has not announced plans to restore the former leader's account, either. Twitter deleted it in January 2021, claiming he was using it to promote violence after tweeting in support of the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
