Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk has revealed that Twitter Blue will be available for $8 per month and will give users the right to wear a blue tick on their profile as one of the perks. Elon, who also runs SpaceX and Tesla, described the existing blue tick setup as a “lords & peasants system”.
Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
Going forward, the system will be less feudal and more capitalistic, with users having the right to buy their tick each month. Aside from getting a blue tick, you’ll get priority in replies, mentions and search which will help defeat spammers, you’ll be able to post long video and audio, and you’ll see half as many ads. Elon said if publishers work with Twitter, then Blue membership may help you bypass paywalls of partner publishers.
With regard to pricing, the service will cost $8 per month in the United States. To keep things fair, pricing in other countries will be decided with a purchasing power parity conversion. This should make it easy for anyone to buy the service, no matter where they live in the world.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this going forward and whether scammers decide to abuse the system. After all, an $8 outlay is not a great deal if you’re going to be scamming Twitter users out of thousands of dollars. Hopefully, Twitter has a plan to prevent this from happening when the new system rolls out.