Introducing: $20 for a Blue Check Mark…or $8…or Whatever
Probably the biggest, weirdest disaster so far has been Musk’s cruel assassination of the blue check mark. After promising to bolster Twitter’s efforts against bots and disinformation, Elon kicked things off last week by kneecapping the platform’s current verification system. In what seemed like it had to be a trollish joke, he announced that the coveted blue check mark would begin to cost $20 per month. After much outcry, he dropped the price to $8—which is still a batshit rate for something that was free less than a month ago. Since then, Twitter has rolled out a number of overlapping and redundant verification systems that have only continued to confuse users. All of this has culminated in the events of this past week, when the pay-to-verify method resulted in a swell of fake verified accounts for public figures and celebrities. Imposters spawned fake verified accounts for George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden, and even Twitter itself, all of which tweeted out a spew of obscene nonsense.
