Elon Musk wants Twitter users to pay to be verified.

 

 In 2009, after Twitter was sued by then-St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa for being impersonated on the platform, the young company introduced a new feature: a blue and white check mark.
The check indicated that Twitter had verified the accounts of artists, athletes, government officials and agencies and other public figures. The option, which kicked off with plans to verify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was presented as protection for individuals at risk of having their accounts fraudulently imitated and as a benefit to all users — a means of letting people know they could trust information being shared by prominent figures.

It soon became one of the platform’s signature features, copied by rivals like Facebook, and created a new kind of cultural cachet for those who received it. Now Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, is looking to overhaul the way verification works, with the potential not only to change who gets a coveted blue check mark, but also to create new headaches for users in spotting fake and fraudulent activity on the platform.
Musk confirmed this week he’s working to launch an updated version of the company’s Twitter Blue subscription service in which any user can pay $8 per month to get or remain verified. The world’s richest man has also used populist language, framing the move as a way to break “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.”
If users buy in, the plan could be a new revenue driver for Twitter, something Musk needs following his $44 billion acquisition of the company, which was partly funded with debt. He has also suggested that verifying more actual, human users could help address the prevalence of fake and spam accounts that he purported to be concerned about during his months-long effort to get out of the acquisition deal.
The logic appears to go something like this: By requiring users to pay for verification, using a bank account or credit card, it would create a higher barrier to entry for inauthentic accounts. Musk said in a tweet Wednesday that if accounts verified under his new system engage in “spam/scam/impersonation, they’ll be suspended, but Twitter will keep their money!” And he said he would create a separate tag that would show up under the name of public figures, similar to how Twitter already identifies government officials and representatives of state media organizations.