Brands need to subscribe to keep their Twitter badges, Musk says
Twitter CEO Elon Musk told brands and advertisers at a Twitter Spaces event Wednesday that they would need to pay $8 monthly to keep their blue badges on the platform, according to an Axios report.
He said the monthly fee is important to “level the playing field,” but offered to personally pay for brands that are “hellbent on not paying.”
Musk said at the event that tweets from verified accounts will appear higher in the users’ main feed in the future, while tweets from non-verified accounts will be in a separate folder.
“Then you can still look at all the others, but it will default to the highly relevant category which will be verified,” he said.
Musk added that he felt paying for blue badges would reduce spam and incentivize users to post less hate speech, adding that bad actors don’t have the money to pay for non-legitimate fake accounts.
His theory was challenged Wednesday evening when a large number of fake accounts emerged, including a spoof account of LeBron James requesting to be traded had over 1,500 retweets and quote tweets before it was suspended and a spoof account of Nintendo tweeting an image of Mario extending his middle finger.
Why it matters: Musk’s presentation is a reminder of why companies are hesitant to advertise on the platform. offering to pay for brands takes away from the product. If something is worth paying for, why would the seller offer to pay for it?
Source: PRDaily
