Stephen King Clashes With Elon Musk Over Monthly Fee for Verified Accounts

© AP Photo / Matt RourkeThis April 26, 2017, file photo shows the Twitter app icon on a mobile phone in Philadelphia.
This April 26, 2017, file photo shows the Twitter app icon on a mobile phone in Philadelphia. - Sputnik International, 1920, 01.11.2022
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Elon Musk, the world's richest man, officially became Twitter's chief executive on Monday after splashing out $44Bln to buy the social network last week. Immediately after taking charge, the Tesla founder sacked Parag Agrawal along with other top executives of the San Francisco-based company.
Amid mounting criticism of the alleged plan to charge $20 a month from verified customers, new Twitter boss Elon Musk has responded to American author and novelist Stephen King's sharp reaction to the news.
Since Musk took control of the microblogging platform in late October, there has been widespread speculation that the social media behemoth will soon ask verified account holders to pay a monthly fee.

As those reports swirled, King took to Twitter on Monday to slam the proposed move. "$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*ck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron," King wrote.

By mentioning Enron in his tweet, King apparently took a swipe at Twitter, suggesting that the social media giant will fall the same way the American energy provider fell in the early years of the millennium. In the Nineties, Enron witnessed rapid growth and even posted revenues of nearly $101Bln in 2000 before going bust in 2006 after an accounting fraud.

Replying to King, Musk said on Tuesday, "We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?" He added that he will "explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls".

Musk lately updated his bio from "Chief Twit" to "Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator".
Before that, he sacked Twitter's previous boss, Parag Agrawal, and other top executives of the San Francisco-based company. Other senior executives to be fired included Twitter's legal, policy and trust department chief Vijaya Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and Sean Edgett, who served as the organization's general counsel for a decade.
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