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UPDATE: This piece has been updated to include recent comments from Elon Musk on Twitter’s verification feature.
Twitter is planning to make sweeping changes to its Twitter Blue subscription service, combining it with Twitter’s verification system and dramatically raising prices, The Verge reported Sunday.
Twitter Blue currently costs $4.99 per month and unlocks a variety of features, such as an edit button, but would cost $19.99 under the company’s new plan to combine the service with verification, The Verge reported, citing anonymous sources and internal communications within Twitter. Verification is currently free, requiring a user to authenticate themselves and achieve a level of public presence to qualify, but users would need to subscribe to Twitter Blue within 90 days to maintain their verification should the plan go through.
Musk has since taken to Twitter, announcing an $8 per month subscription to Twitter Blue in a Nov. 1 thread. The subscription would include verification, reduced ads and the ability to post longer videos among other benefits, while generating a revenue stream for the company to pay content creators, Musk said.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk had previously tweeted Sunday evening, in response to a user requesting help to get verified.
The idea of forcing people to pay for blue checks gets Twitter’s value proposition totally backward.
For Twitter to have value, it needs to provide valid information from legitimate sources. If anyone can pay for the appearance of validity, the site losses all value.
— Max Berger (@maxberger) October 31, 2022
Some verified users pushed back against the plan, with some suggesting that verified users were critical to Twitter’s success. (RELATED: Elon Musk Finally Takes Over Twitter, Fires Top Executives)
“Verified people are a major reason why many people are on twitter in the first place,” said David Hogg, a prominent gun control activist and school shooting survivor, in a Monday tweet. “If anything they should be paying us. Verified accounts bring people to twitter and help with ad revenue.”
“I suspect if this change goes through, it’ll just generally be harder for anyone to know what information is in any way reliable or vouched for by a real person or organization,” cosmologist and author Katie Mack tweeted Sunday. “More noise, less signal.”
Twitter did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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