Elon Musk, the newly minted owner, chairman and CEO of Twitter, says he wants to allow anyone to be verified on the platform for $8 a month, in exchange for being able to post longer messages and videos and receive fewer ads.
In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, Musk called the current verification system a “lords and peasants system,” where prominent people have their identities verified by the platform and are recognized with a blue verification mark by their name.
The system was designed as a way to make sure users could see if certain accounts were really who they said they were, but the company has never been explicitly clear on what qualifications are needed to be verified.
Last year, Twitter launched an expanded version of its service called Twitter Blue, which includes a monthly fee but adds the ability to edit tweets and allows some users to charge for their own content.
On Tuesday, Musk tweeted that he wants to change the system so anyone can be verified, as long as they’re willing to pay $8 a month, with the “price adjusted per country proportional to purchasing power parity.”
In return, verified users will be prioritized in searches and mentions, which Musk believes is essential to defeating spam/scam,” which he says plagues the system.
It also said verified users would be able to post longer tweets, which are currently limited to 280 characters, and videos, which are currently limited to just over two minutes.
In return, Musk said, verified users would be subjected to fewer ads and suggested he was open to the idea of paying some users for the content they produce on the platform.
“Power to the people!” he said.
The current overlords of Twitter & The peasant system for who has a blue mark or not is bullshit.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
—@elonmusk
The idea is just the latest in an eventful week at the company. Last Friday, Musk’s long and winding road to taking over Twitter finally came to fruition. Once he gained control of the company, his first step was to fire most of the existing management team.
Filings with regulators on Monday indicate that he has been named CEO and sole member of the company’s board of directors.
Since then, Musk has spent most of his time talking about what he wants to change about the platform, but Tuesday’s Twitter thread was the first time he offered anything approaching concrete details.
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Some Twitter users say they’re worried Elon Musk’s plans to loosen the site’s moderation rules will turn it into a hotbed of hate speech and abuse, and are considering leaving the social media platform before it goes astray .
In addition to Twitter, Musk is currently the CEO of four other companies: electric car maker Tesla, rocket company SpaceX, brain chip startup Neuralink, and the Boring Company, a tunnel company.
Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter and was CEO before Parag Agrawal, who was among those fired recently, was pushed to step down as the company’s top job because investors believed he couldn’t do the job while being CEO of Block Inc. , which operates the Square payment platform.