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Elon Musk's plan to monetize Twitter verification stumbles [1]

['Mark Frauenfelder']

Date: 2023-03-31

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that has been losing money, had an idea to turn his company's fortunes around: "I'll charge businesses $1,000 a month to keep their verified status!" he thought. "Just imagine how much money I could make!" It was his best idea since the Cybertruck. But when businesses were told they had to pay Musk to remain verified on Twitter, they balked. The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times had no intention of paying Musk, and even Catturd, a right-wing troll who held Musk in a Rasputin-like thrall, complained about the verification payments.

Musk realized that insisting on moving forward with his money-making scheme would lead Twitter further in the direction of becoming a platform for harassers and Nazis. Although this certainly appealed to the genius inventor, he also owed billions of dollars to his investors, and as they say, "money talks."

With great reluctance, Musk announced that the 10,000 most followed accounts on Twitter would be exempt from the fee.

From Variety:

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