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Twitter’s new owner and CEO, Elon Musk, appeared to confirm reports that the platform is considering charging people $20 to maintain the coveted blue check mark of verification on their account in an exchange with the horror author Stephen King.
King pushed back on those reports, tweeting to his almost 7 million followers on Monday: “They should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron,” he said, alluding to the energy company that collapsed in scandal and filed for bankruptcy.
In response, Musk suggested that charging for verification would help the site to make a profit and appeared to barter with King, tweeting: “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”
“I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls,” Musk added. King did not reply.
The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX owner completed his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion last week after several months of negotiations and legal wrangling.
In the run-up to his Twitter acquisition, Musk made the issue of fake Twitter accounts run by “bots” a point of major contention as he demanded more internal data from the company to evaluate the number of fake users on the site.
He has since said that the “whole verification process is being revamped” without sharing more details, though he has yet to confirm whether any payment will be requested for verification.
