In response, Musk suggested that charging for verification would help the site turn a profit, and appeared to negotiate with King. tweeting: “We have to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”
“I’ll explain the rationale at length before this goes live. It’s the only way to defeat bots and trolls,” Musk added. Rey didn’t respond.
The billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX completed his purchase of Twitter for 44,000 million dollars last week after several months of negotiations and legal wrangling.
In the run-up to his Twitter acquisition, Musk turned the problem of fake Twitter accounts run by “bots” into a point of contention since it demanded more internal data from the company to assess the number of fake users on the site.
he has since said that “the entire verification process is being renewed” without sharing more details, although it has yet to confirm if any payment will be requested for verification.
The blue verification badge means that an account is “authentic, notable, and active.” according to to Twitter, and is generally held by public figures in government, news and entertainment, among other limited fields.
Tech investor and longtime Musk associate Jason Calacanis, who since Musk’s acquisition has been featured in Twitter’s business directory, also asked for interest in various payment amounts for a blue check on Monday, administering a survey of prices ranging from $5 to $15 per month. While the poll remains open, an overwhelming 82 percent of respondents have so far indicated they would not pay. Musk responded to the Calacanis poll by saying, “Interesting.”
Echoing Musk’s logic, Calacanis tweeted that “having many more people verified on Twitter, while weeding out armies of bots, is the fastest path to making the platform safer and more useful for everyone.”
Taking control of Twitter, akin to a public online plaza for debate and dialogue across the political spectrum – may be pressuring Musk to show signs of recognition of the demands and responsibilities of owning the social platform. On Monday night, Musk changed his Twitter bio from “Chief Twit” to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator.”
Musk formally took over as Twitter CEO after several of Twitter’s longtime executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawalthey were laid off following the purchase of the San Francisco-based company.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that members of Musk’s inner circle, along with the other top Twitter executives, held detailed discussions about the site’s approach to content moderation and spam, as well as plans for a first round of layoffs for about 25 percent of the workforce.
A financial presentation on Monday too He showed that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey transferred his shares of Twitter to the company, making him one of Musk’s investors.
Since taking over the platform, Musk has also said he has plans to form a “content moderation board” of experts with “very diverse viewpoints.” He added that no major content decisions or account resets would be made before that council meets.
It comes amid speculation that Musk will reinstate former President Donald Trump, a prolific tweeter, to the site. trump was forbidden after the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, with Twitter citing the “risk of further incitement to violence”. The reprimand also meant that most of Trump’s tweets disappeared from the site, removing the catalog of his thoughts.
“If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump was going to come back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!” Musk tweeted this week.
Meanwhile, Trump saying Fox News last week that for now he prefers his own platform, Truth Social, for his public messages.
“I don’t think Twitter can be successful without me,” Trump said. “I stay in Truth. I like it better, I like the way it works, I like Elon, but I’m sticking with Truth,” he added.
Elizabeth Dwoskin and Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.
