Twitter ‘s new head Elon Musk said Tuesday the site will charge $8 (Approximatly ₹660) per month to verify users’ accounts.
“Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” the billionaire entrepreneur tweeted in reference to the platform’s famous blue checkmark, saying the new plan would upend the “current lords & peasants system” and create a new revenue stream for the site.
Musk also tweeted that the price would be adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.
He also added that Twitter blue users will get priority in replies, mentions & searches, which is essential to defeat spam/scam, the ability to post long videos & audio and half as many ads.
This came almost 12 hours after Musk in a reply to author Stephen King asked if $8 was an amount he would pay for being a verified user, adding that charging a fee was the only way to “defeat the bots & trolls”.
Launched in June 2021, Twitter Blue is the platform’s first subscription service that offered exclusive access to premium features, including an option to edit tweets.
The service allowed subscribers to read articles from some publishers without advertisements. The social media platform also made an edit button available to paid subscribers in the United States last month.