Elon Musk Claims He’s Personally Paying Twitter Fee for LeBron James, Stephen King and William Shatner to Retain Blue Check-Marks
variety.comTodd Spangler NY Digital Editor The squeaky wheel gets the Twitter blue check-mark, it seems. After Twitter’s mass revocation Thursday of thousands of “legacy” verified blue check-marks, carrying out owner Elon Musk’s long-promised purge of the “corrupt” system, several high-profile accounts still had the iconic blue badges… even though they evidently aren’t paying for Twitter Blue (the subscription service whose perks now include a blue check-mark).
Those included NBA superstar LeBron James, actor William Shatner and author Stephen King — each of whom had tweeted that they wouldn’t pay for Twitter Blue or had complained about Musk’s switch in the verification program.
Musk later said he was “personally” paying for Twitter Blue on behalf of James, Shatner and King. Musk, who serves as CEO of Twitter as well as Tesla and SpaceX, currently has a net worth north of $173 billion. (It’s unclear whether Musk is in fact paying his own company for those subscriptions or if Twitter is just waiving the fees.) On Thursday, King expressed confusion about the situation, tweeting, “My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue.
I haven’t. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. I haven’t.” Musk later replied to him, “You’re welcome namaste
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