Blue for $8 per month– Elon Musk announces fee for Twitter verfication

According to Elon Musk, Twitter will charge users who want a blue checkmark next to their name to indicate a verified account $8 (£7 per month).

Mr. Musk claimed it was "necessary to beat spam/scam" as part of the reforms made after a $44 billion (£38 billion) buyout of the social media platform.

A blue check mark next to a username, which is often reserved for well-known people, is presently free.

Critics claim that the change may make it more difficult to locate trustworthy sources.

The richest man in the world, Mr. Musk, noted that premium customers would receive preferential treatment in replies and searches, as well as half as many adverts.

"Power to the people! Blue for $8/month," the billionaire said on Twitter, criticising the old method of blue tick verification as a "lords and peasants system".

However, Nu Wexler, the former head of global policy communications at Twitter, cautioned that charging for blue ticks would make it more difficult to identify false information.

"With disinformation as an issue that a lot of platforms are struggling with, verification is one of the ways that journalists, academic researchers and some users use to filter out disinformation or low-quality information," Mr Wexler told the BBC's Today programme.

"If you're offering up blue checks for rent, it makes it harder to sift through disinformation and find high-quality information."

For those whose identities were targets for impersonation, such as celebrities, politicians, and journalists, Twitter's previous method of confirming users for a blue tick involved a brief online registration form.

The mechanism was put in place by the business in 2009, following a lawsuit accusing it of not doing enough to stop fake accounts.

But as he seeks to revamp Twitter's business, which hasn't turned a profit in years, Mr. Musk is up against a significant challenge.

Even while some businesses have grown anxious about advertising on the site under his leadership, he has stated that he intends to lessen Twitter's dependency on advertisements.

General Motors, a competitor of Elon Musk's Tesla electric car startup, announced last week that it will stop running ads on the website.

According to a media buyer for a top advertising agency, several other well-known firms have more covertly suspended their advertising on the platform while they wait to see how Mr. Musk's changes turn out.

IPG, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, asked its customers to halt Twitter advertisements on Monday in order to gain more clarification about Twitter's efforts to ensure "trust and safety" on the network. Some of the biggest corporations in the world send IPG billions of pounds each year to manage their marketing budgets.

Initial suggestions that the fee for blue tick rights could be $20 (£18) per month caused scepticism about the fee.

Many users of the platform agreed with the author Stephen King, who responded to news of the changes by writing that Twitter "should pay me."

In a message to Mr. King, Mr. Musk stated, "We need to pay the bills somehow!"

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