Elon Musk is trying anything and everything to get the money coming back in to Twitter. He keeps pushing the new Twitter Blue model launching on Monday, November 7th. The new $8 USD (other countries based on their purchasing power) plan is to include verification (which means anyone who pays the monthly fee gets the verification badge even if they don’t need it), plus slew of other ‘features’ (but not ad-free content).
Instead of creating the town square where important public discourse is freely debated (which Musk claimed was his Twitter vision), he’s now making moves to potentially skew discussions by ranking unauthenticated accounts with freshly granted blue checks above others in feeds, not because they’re users who have more informed or more popular points of view, but because they are just about anyone who paid $8 that month. His other big ideas to drive profits reportedly include charges to direct-message celebrity users and charges to see OnlyFans-like videos posted by paid, verified users. In weighing these ideas, Musk is seemingly ready to charge fees wherever he can and unafraid to throw up paywalls between users and the content that arguably initially drew them to Twitter.
These paid subscribers don’t just get a blue check, Twitter documents show. They would seemingly also get access to other benefits, like the ability to post longer videos and have their replies to other tweets ranked more highly. The latter perk typically happens anyway when a verified user’s replies get the most views and then the most likes, but now it’s yet another perk being built into the blue check and then sold back to them in the Musk era.
There are so many wrong with this plan, besides the obvious that existing verified users are not wanting to pay a monthly fee to continue to have their verification badge. A word of warning to those existing ‘verified’ users scammers are pushing out several more phishing/scam emails in attempt to steal your account (and possibly financial) information. The biggest issue is the ‘verification badge’ is becoming a status symbol and does not mean the account is actually being used by the person they claim they are. Someone needs to remind Chief Twit we are nearing (if not already in) a recession and people are going to be cutting expenses anywhere they can. Raising the Twitter Blue’s monthly fee from $4.99 to $8 USD may not seem like much, but it can cause a lot people to rethink ‘do I really need this’?
via ARS Technica
