Elon Musk Concedes Twitter’s Move To Paid Blue-Check Verification May Be A “Dumb Decision”, Intends To Get “80% Of Humanity” On Platform
deadline.comNew Twitter owner Elon Musk presided over a rambling, hourlong appeal to advertisers, defending the newly instituted $8-a-month blue-check verification program and vowing to make the social platform “a force for good.” The conversation convened on the company’s Spaces audio platform (listen to full audio below) came as a number of major advertisers have paused their buys on Twitter given its dramatic change of ownership. “I think it’s going to be a good world,” Musk said of the new blue-check system. “Don’t we believe in ‘one person, one vote?’ I think we do. … Maybe this is a dumb decision, but we’ll see.” The company was just taken private by Musk and a group of investors in a $44 billion deal first proposed last spring.
Musk spent months trying to wiggle out of the takeover, but finally went ahead and closed it last month. Among the many changes he has ushered in just days into his oversight of the platform is an overhaul of the way the company verifies accounts.
Historically, users whose accounts were deemed by the company to have particular value to the larger Twitter population because they were figures of note from politics, media, corporate life, entertainment or other sectors (about 400,000 or so accounts) got a blue check.
As of today, Twitter has eliminated that system, which Musk derided as the kind of “lords-and-peasants situation” that the United States “fought a war over.” Instead, Twitter will charge $8 a month for anyone who wants to have a blue check.
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