Photo: Elon Musk
Twitter’s ‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk announced on Tuesday morning the company’s new plan to defeat bots and spam on the social network.
The company will introduce Twitter Blue which will include a verification checkmark for $8 USD per month.
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit,” said Musk just over an hour ago. “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
Musk added the service will be “price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.”
Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
The ‘Chief Twit’ also announced other new features coming to Twitter Blue, alongside the verification checkmark:
The new features “will give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” said Musk, noting “creators need to make a living!”.
Musk was confident this new service will defeat bots and spam on Twitter, which has become a major problem. “If a paid Blue account engages in spam/scam, that account will be suspended,” said Musk. “Essentially, this raises the cost of crime on Twitter by several orders of magnitude,” he said, in classic Musk-ian fashion (is that a word?!).
After a rumoured $20 per month price to retain verification status was leaked to the media, it made some existing users angry, such as author Stephen King.
“$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron,” said King on Monday.
We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
That’s when Musk swooped in to reply with a new lower pricepoint, saying, “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk added, “I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”
Prior to Musk acquiring Twitter, one of his main concerns was the amount of bots and trolls on the social network. Musk tried to back out of the Twitter deal, arguing the social network was not being forthcoming about actual bot account numbers and other data.
Musk has reportedly pulled over 50 Tesla engineers over to help change Twitter after acquiring the company last week.
