Twitter now being in the hands of Elon Musk becomes more and more unbearable by the day. Not only did he fire the app’s top executives and let racists spew the N-word at insane rates (it got so bad Lebron James had to step in), but now he is charging for blue checkmark verification after firing the entire Twitter board and making himself sole director.
On Sunday, he cryptically tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.” The Verge, however, explained what is in the platform’s immediate future:
“The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is currently planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired.
Shonda Rimes shared that she was stepping away from the platform since it’s now under Musk’s control, but will more Black people follow suit? Folks on Twitter are sounding off about how misinformation will run rampant since you can now pay to be verified instead of having to be a reputable source.
One user warned: “When fake news websites start buying verification and it sparks a global crisis, we’ll come back to this.”
Another noted: “This man has really overestimated how much anyone cares about having a blue check. He lives in a bubble man.”
Folks who remain on Twitter, it’s becoming evident that you may not want to explore another social media platform, but you’re gonna have to get the hell up outta there.