Elon Musk Reveals Twitter Verification Badge Pay-to-Play Plan

Twitter's new owner Elon Musk has outlined in a series of tweets his plan for making it so that people can pay to gain a blue checkmark signaling that they've been "verified." Under this new plan, users would subscribe to Twitter Blue for $8 a month, the premium service offered by Twitter currently which is supposedly being revamped to add the verification status and more. In the same tweets, Musk listed a couple of additional features supposedly set to be included in the Twitter Blue package.

Musk tweeted about the plans for Twitter Blue and verification statuses on Tuesday after igniting discussions on social media recently with the notion that Twitter would begin charging users to obtain and keep their verified badges. These badges are meant to signify which accounts are "official" and which aren't so that duplicate accounts can't be made, and they appear as either a blue or white checkmark next to a name depending on if you have on light mode or dark mode.

What's the Plan for Twitter Verification?

Musk called out the current verification system on Twitter this week to kick off his thread of tweets about the topic. Currently, people have to submit an application to Twitter with evidence of why their account should be verified. By looping that perk under Twitter Blue, people will be able to pay to be verified instead.

"Twitter's current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit," Musk said. "Power to the people! Blue for $8/month."

What Comes with Twitter Blue?

In addition to the verified status, Musk said that Twitter Blue would boast additional perks for subscribers. Musk said those would include "priority in replies" which would put subscribers' responses ahead of others "which is essential to defeat spam/scam," the ability to post longer video and audio clips, and "half as many ads." It was also said that subscribers would be able to bypass paywalls when accessing a news story via Twitter "for publishers willing to work with us," Musk said.

Nowhere in the thread of tweets did Musk give an idea of when the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service would be rolled out, so all the perks and pricing info should still be considered subject to change, for now.