Elon Musk says Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers

Elon Musk tweeted that “Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers” in response to Stephen King’s criticism that the platform plans to charge users about $20 a month to receive a verification badge.

As reported by The Verge late Sunday, Twitter is getting ready to include verification badges in its premium subscription service Twitter Blue, which will get a big price hike soon.

According to the report, those who have received their badge will be required to subscribe to the service within 90 days or they will lose their blue check.

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

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022

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

Twitter Blue, which was first introduced for $2.99 last year and later increased to $4.99 per month, is now available in many countries including the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. With this subscription, users get access to premium features such as ad-free reading of articles and editing their tweets within 30 minutes of posting.

Elon Musk, who recently changed his Twitter bio to ‘Chief Twit’, has now changed it to ‘Twitter Complaint Line Operator’.