Elon Musk Says Twitter to Charge $8 per Month for Blue Checkmark Verification — Plans to Reward Content Creators

Tesla, Spacex, and Twitter boss Elon Musk has decided to charge $8 per month for users of the social media platform to have a blue checkmark. “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.

Tesla CEO and Twitter boss Elon Musk announced on Twitter Tuesday that he plans to charge $8 per month for Twitter users to have a blue verification checkmark that is currently free. His announcement came after several days of discussion on Twitter following his acquisition of the social media platform.

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.”

The new Twitter chief added:

This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators.

Some people said they welcomed the idea of Twitter paying content creators. One user wrote: “Creator payments are huge to incentivize content creation. Love this idea.” Musk replied: “Absolutely essential. Creators need to make a living!”

Before he settled on the $8-a-month charge, Musk considered charging $20 per month. However, many Twitter users reacted negatively to the idea. Famous fiction author Stephen King said he would leave the platform if the charge gets instituted. Musk replied explaining that Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers and will need to pay the bills somehow. 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:

Yes, this will destroy the bots. If a paid Blue account engages in spam/scam, that account will be suspended. Essentially, this raises the cost of crime on Twitter by several 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.

Nonetheless, some people are unhappy about the $8/month charge. “$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, a senior front page editor at the Huffpost, opined:

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how verification is supposed to 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.

Would you pay $8 a month for a blue checkmark on Twitter? And, what do you think of Musk’s plan to reward content creators? Let us know in the comments section below.