Seems like Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk does not get affected by the criticism he has been receiving over his decision to charge Twitter users to get verified accounts. On Saturday, Musk took to Twitter and reiterated his stance on the blue tick fee.
“Trash me all day, but it’ll cost $8,” he tweeted. After Musk became the new CEO of Twitter, reports circulated on social media that stated the microblogging site would charge USD 20 per month for blue verification badge. On Tuesday, Musk confirmed the reports and announced that the company will charge USD 8 a month for Twitter’s subscription service with priority in replies, mentions, and searches.
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for USD 8/month,” he tweeted. However, Musk’s decision of implementing the blue tick fee did not go well with many.
Trash me all day, but it’ll cost $8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022
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 color home screen icon. Apart from “blue tick fee”, Musk has also been receiving a lot of hate on Twitter for laying off employees.
Defending his decision to fire employees, Musk said that it was needed as Twitter was losing more than USD 4 million per day. “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over USD 4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk tweeted.
In April, Twitter accepted Musk’s proposal to buy and make the social media service private. However, Musk soon began sowing doubt about his intentions to follow through with the agreement, alleging that the company failed to adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the service. In July, in a surprising turn of events, Musk who had long been showing his interest to buy Twitter terminated the deal. The Tesla CEO did so by alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform.
After Musk put out the deal termination announcement, the market saw a sharp decline. Later, Twitter sued Musk accusing him of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal. Again, last week, Musk confirmed that he would move forward with the Twitter buyout at the originally agreed price of USD 54.20 per share.
