Elon Musk haggles with Stephen King over Twitter verification price: ‘How about $8?’
After announcing that Twitter verification on the platform will cost users a monthly fee of $20 a month as part of a new development to the app, new CEO Elon Musk has bumped the price down for Twitter Blue.
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is b*******. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” he said in a tweet on Tuesday.
Users will have to still pay the $8 if they want to continue to be verified on the app or if they want to be verified for the first time.
He also announced in a tweet thread that in addition to the blue checkmark, Twitter Blue subscribers will get priority in replies, mentions and search, the ability to post long video and audio and half as many ads as normal Twitter users.
However, any payment at all is not holding over well for some Twitter users.
Author Stephen King weighed in on the conversation as well.
“$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*** that, they should pay me,” he said. When a user replied to his tweet saying “It’s always the really wealthy ones that are the cheapest,” he promptly replied with “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”
Musk responded to King’s comment.
“We need to pay the bills somehow!,” he said. “Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”
King has yet to answer Musk. However, Musk followed up his comment saying that the payment is the “only way” to stop bots online.
“I will explain the rational in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat bots & trolls,” he said.
Some Twitter users are having fun with the passive aggressive exchange between the two.
“This Stephen King Elon exchange sounds like a used car salesman,” Exavier Pope tweeted.
Other Twitter users voiced their opinions on the initial $20 a month charge. You can view those here.