Elon Musk confirms Twitter will charge for a blue tick – and argues with Stephen King about it

Elon Musk has confirmed that Twitter is planning to charge people to be verified – and is bartering with Stephen King about how much it should cost.

The discussion between the pair came about after reports suggested that one of Mr Musk’s plans to generate revenue for his newly acquired company was to charge for the blue ticks, which indicate a given account has been verified.

It led to immediate outcry from users of the platform, who argued that the move will just amplify spam accounts and that users should not have to pay for the security offered by the verification process. One of those critics was author Stephen King, who is among the site’s most prominent users.

“$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron,” Mr King wrote.

Mr Musk esponded that the change was an attempt to generate revenue, and that it would help reduce rather than encourage spam. He appeared to confirm that the change was coming, insisting that he would explain it before it is introduced.

He also began to barter with the author about how much the monthly charge should be for the verification process.

“We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” he wrote.

“I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”

Mr Musk’s posts led to yet more criticism, from users who suggested that his attempts to barter with Stephen King over the price of the feature in public suggested that it was ill-conceived.

Twitter launched verification in 2009, with the aim of easily showing official accounts and combatting a run of impersonators. The company has never been entirely clear about how it sees the blue tick that marks verification: though it claims that it should not be seen as an endorsement from Twitter, it has removed it from some accounts in the past.