Stephen King Hears Elon Musk’s Defense of Controversial $20 Blue Checkmark Twitter Plan
The new Twitter owner has fired back at the author, whose horrified “f*** that” reaction to a plan to charge for a verification went viral: “We need to pay the bills somehow! … How about $8?”
Elon Musk acknowledged the startling and contentious concept is in the works by responding to Stephen King’s outraged reaction to his rumored intention to charge all verified users for their blue checkmark.
King’s response to a story that Musk planned to charge verified users a whopping $20 per month to maintain their checkmark status went viral on Monday. “How much does it cost to keep my blue check?” King sent out tweets to his 6.9 million subscribers. “Fuck that, I should get paid. I’ll be gone, just like Enron, if that becomes law. King said, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing,” when a reader said he could afford the price.
Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight and a political expert, wrote to his 3.5 million followers in a similar manner: “I’m probably the perfect target for this, use Twitter a tonne, can afford $20/mo, not particularly anti-Elon, but my reaction is that I’ve generated a tonne of valuable free content for Twitter over the years and they can go fuck themselves.”
Early on Tuesday, Musk responded to the controversy by addressing King personally and said, “We need to find a way to pay the bills! Twitter can’t rely just on sponsors. Consider $8.
In his subsequent statement, Musk hinted that there would still be more explanation to come: “I will explain the rationale in the longer form before this is done. The bots and trolls can only be eliminated in this manner.
Later, Musk appeared to strengthen his position by presenting the cost as a means of empowering the general public: “Twitter’s existing lords & peasants structure for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is ridiculous. People power, indeed! At $8 per month, Blue.
According to detractors, verified accounts serve as a tool that lends credibility to the hellscape/wild west social media site rather than just being a free bonus for a specific level of user. Blue checks make it easier for regular readers (and journalists) to tell whether a comment made by a notable figure is genuinely from that person as opposed to a fan or impostor. In other words, it serves as a means of halting the spread of false information. TechCrunch dubbed Musk’s idea a potential “misinformation nightmare.”
“Musk and his buddies view this plan as a way to get people to actually give Twitter money,” TechCrunch noted. “But by monetizing a symbol that currently has value, they will ultimately remove all of that existing value.”
The Verge reports that Musk’s strategy is to make Twitter Blue, a $4.99 premium service that allows users to modify their tweets, a requirement for those who want to keep their verified status. The new programme must be subscribed to within 90 days or users will lose their blue checkmark. Musk allegedly warned personnel allocated to the programme as a whole that failing to comply with the new guidelines by November 7 would result in termination. However, no new programme has been formally introduced as of yet.