Just days into the new reign of Elon Musk, Twitter is reportedly interested in making users pay to have their blue-tick verification badge. It’s even believed that people currently with blue ticks will be stripped of their checkmarks unless they foot the bill.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now”, Musk tweeted on Sunday.
More of the plan was reported by tech website Platformer who spoke to some insider sources with knowledge of the matter. The change in direction revolves around Twitter Blue, the paid-for subscription service that gives tweets some more features.
Currently, people can get a verification blue tick if they’re a figure in the public eye, such as celebrities, public figures, politicians, etc. Journalists are often given blue ticks to help people discern whether the information they tweet is legitimate.
Under the new proposal, paying a $4.99 monthly fee for Twitter Blue will be the only way to get a blue-tick verification badge. Provided you pay up, anyone can get it. If people fail to fork over the monthly charge then they face losing their blue tick privileges within 90 days.
There are very few details about the plan and there’s no guarantee it will go ahead. Nevertheless, the thought of the proposal has led to murmurs among the crowd, with someone commentators worried about how it might change the dynamic of the social media platform.
“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 checkmark is 100 percent cringe,” tweeted vlogger and science communicator, Hank Green.
“The thing about Instagram, YouTube, and especially TikTok is that you only ever see the most-upvoted responses to what you create. While on Twitter, you can easily see them all rolling in. This causes us all to give way more weight to unpopular opinions than we should,” he added.
The proposal comes straight off the bat of Musk’s takeover of Twitter which was finalized late last week after a rollercoaster of legal battles, controversy, and complex negotiations. There’s been a lot of speculation about how his ownership might change the platform and even rumors of job lay-offs at the company.
For now, however, we’ll just have to wait and see how the Musk-era of Twitter will pan out.
Source Link: Musk's Twitter Takeover May Bring Bad News For People With Blue Ticks