Twitter CEO Elon Musk has made a U-turn to settle for $8, for Twitter verification badge monthly fee.
As part of his plans after his takeover, Musk disclosed that it was essential for verified accounts to pay a verification fee, noting that it would defeat the number of scams and spam on the micro-blogging platform
While announcing it on Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted, “To all complainers, please continue complaining, but it will cost $8. 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.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Reacting to this, a prominent fundraiser of the U.S Democratic Party, Jon Cooper responded to Musk tweet, saying “Elon, this negates the whole idea behind the blue checkmark, which verifies that an account is official or legitimate.
“Users can already pay $4.99/month to get the benefits of Twitter Blue — this would simply be “Enhanced Twitter Blue” for $8. That’s fine, if that’s your intent”.
Recall that Musk had earlier set the fee at $20 which received so many criticisms and backlash from users, with most of them stating that they won’t pay such an amount for the Blue tick, noting that it was unnecessary.
This however forced the Tesla CEO to reduce the fee to $8 per month. Musk however disclosed that the new fee of $8 would adjust prices by country proportionate to purchasing power parity, and would provide the micro-blogging platform a revenue stream to reward content creators.
Additionally, Musk disclosed that the new payment plan would include additional benefits for users, such as priority in replies, mentions & search, and the ability to post longer video/audio content and half as many ads, And also a paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with the company.
There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.
After his Musk acquisition of Twitter, he has been looking for ways to monetize the platform as he said he needed to pay bills.
Meanwhile, in 2009, Twitter introduced the verification badge after it was slammed with a lawsuit for not doing enough to prevent the platform from imposters and parody accounts.
The platform has so far taken a benign approach to its many ‘parody accounts’, as majority of these accounts are created by agenda-driven mischief makers who are spreading damaging falsehoods.