Elon Musk announced that the new version of Twitter Blue will include verification, available for $8 per month in the US. At the same time, the price will be “adjusted by country in proportion to purchasing power parity.” He announced the changes to the premium service, stating that “lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.”

Musk also says that thanks to the service, you will have:

– priority in replies, mentions and searches (according to Musk, this is “necessary to defeat spam/fraud”);

– the ability to post long videos and audio;

– half as many ads;

– and “paywall bypass for publishers who want to work with us.”


Elon Musk will allow you to pay $8 to verify your Twitter account

Before that, Twitter Blue was a non-verification service. It costs $4.99 per month, and its main offerings were the ability to read Twitter without ads, cancel or edit tweets (in some countries), and customize the navigation bar. It also allows you to set NFT as your profile picture.

Musk has made clear his intention to reduce Twitter’s reliance on advertising for revenue in favor of subscriptions. Recently, a plan was discussed within the company that predicted charging $20 per month for verification, while employees were given about a week to implement the changes.

Musk hasn’t announced when the new pricing and feature set will go into effect, but for now the internal Blue subscription documentation is for the old system. Musk also said the subscription would give the company a “revenue stream to reward content creators,” but he didn’t share details on what those creator rewards would look like in practice.

It is also unclear how the verification system will work. Historically, it has been available to a limited number of well-known users who can be impersonated either as a joke or to spread misinformation. However, Musk said that he wants to use the system to combat spam.