American talk show host Stephen Colbert believes that Twitter will be chaos if Elon Musks starts charging for blue ticks.
Musk completed his £38bn Twitter takeover last week and has already said he is the “sole director” after dissolving the company’s entire board of directors.
In a leaked business plan, it has since emerged that Musk is apparently attempting to figure out ways to monetize the social media platform.
According to the plan, Musk wants to charge verified users $20 (around £17) a month to keep their blue tick. Said users will only have 90 days to sign up before their tick gets removed.
“But that would be chaos, I rely on that blue check mark to know which of my butters I can’t not believe!” Colbert said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday (1 November).
“And are you telling me that paragons of authenticity like Papa Johns and Papa Johns U.K. will risk falling to the same level as unverified frauds like Papa Johns Houston?” he joked.
“You know it’s bad when Papa Johns says, ‘We cannot in good conscience verify that that is pizza’,”
Writer Stephen King has also responded to the rumours of charging online. He tweeted saying: “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*** that, they should pay me.”
Musk then directly replied to his tweet, seemingly attempting to haggle with King.
“We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” he wrote.
Yesterday (1 November) Musk confirmed that a Twitter blue tick will cost $8 (£6.97) per month as he branded the platform’s current verification system “bulls***”.
You can find a roundup of the celebrities quitting Twitter in protest of Musks takeover here.
