Netizens react to $20 payment for twitter verification
By Abimbola Mohammed
Following the recent announcement on the directive given by Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, to his employees on meeting the deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave, Twitter users are beginning to react to the proposed development.
Twitter said it plans to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told to meet a deadline of 7 November, 2022, to launch the feature or be fired.
In a tweet, Musk said: “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullsh*t. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
Stating the benefit for having the Blue tick, Musk wrote: “Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity. You will also get priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam, ability to post long video & audio, and half as many ads.”
“And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us. This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators.
“There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians,” he added.
“To all complainers, please continue complaining, but it will cost $8,” Musk said.
Recall that Musk has been clear in the months leading up to his acquisition that he wanted to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots.
As of 2021, there were roughly 400,000 verified accounts. Since Twitter has around 400 million active users, just 0.1 percent of active accounts are verified.
Frank Green, CEO Complexly Media, using a verified account tweeted that on a post that he may need to unsubscribe as a current user of the feature.
“Hilarious thing is, I’m a current twitter Blue subscriber but I’ll need to unsubscribe if they make verification conditional to having a Twitter Blue subscription because paying for a check mark is 100% cringe,” he tweeted.
According to @EmilyGorcenski tweet, “There are about 300k verified twitter accounts. If every single account opted to pay this fee, this would bring in about $18m in revenue yearly. That’s enough to pay off the $44B purchase price in slightly less than 2500 years. If he opened pay-to-verification to everyone, what would probably happen is about 0.1% of people actually try it? See that a verified check gives you almost no additional features and then cancel it the next month.”
David Leavitt @David_Leavitt, a Multimedia Journalist, wrote: “Apparently, Twitter charges $20 a month for someone to be verified on Twitter? That makes verification meaningless. The whole point was so people know you are the real you. Twitter is requiring content creators that make the site entertaining to pay them? Instagram actually pays content creators to use their services. I’ve barely used Instagram, but they are willing to pay users up to $1,200 a month to post. Twitter is going to lose all the content creators.”
Micheal Kukielka @DetriotBORG with a verified account wrote: “I’m not paying $20/month for twitter verification.”
DomTheBomb @DomTheBombYT, a YouTube with twitter blue tick said: “I just got my Twitter verification check two months ago after 6 years of hard and numerous declined appeals! Now I hear I’ll have to pay 20 bucks a month to keep it. By no means am I hating on Twitter or any of that stuff – I’m just pretty disappointed. It’s not the price part that annoys me the most, it’s the fact it seems the ones who worked their butts off to get verified are getting stiffed. Maybe I’ll be wrong.”
Robert Alai @RobertAli, a politician from Kenya, said he has been paying for his verified account before now, so the policy doesn’t change anything for him.
“I have been paying $3 for my Twitter blue. So $20 for Twitter verification with proper control on the other things shouldn’t be a bad thing.”
On his part, David Hundeyin, Founder West AfricaWeek, tweeted: “Multibillionaire tech bro has let his big mouth and ego trap him into overpaying by 3x to buy a problematic platform in the worst deal of all time and now he wants to charge $240/year profiles. LOL, please take it. When fake news websites start buying verification and it sparks a global crisis, we’ll come back to this.”
Do2dtun Energy gAD, @iamDo2dtun Radio Host, Cool FM, wrote: “Elon na you go use your app by yourself las las.”
The point of Twitter verification is that for certain individuals/organizations, it’s useful to be able to verify their statements are coming from them. (This is why so many journalists/reporters are verified). It’s supposed to help combat disinformation, not be a status symbol.
The Twitter Blue subscription launched widely almost a year ago as a way to view ad-free articles from some publishers and make other tweaks to the app, such as a different colour home screen icon. In the few quarters that twitter reported earning as a public company after that debut.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.