Elon Musk defended his plan to charge a fee for a Twitter verification badge after Stephen King lambasted the idea – but the Twitter owner did agree to slash the price for a coveted blue tick down to $8 from the previously-proposed $20 per month.
The conversation between the tech billionaire and the celebrated author has gone viral, with detractors and supporters on both sides.
After reports emerged suggesting that Twitter would begin charging users a monthly subscription fee for keeping their ‘blue tick’ – seen as a mark of credibility – author Stephen King, 75, denounced the plan in no uncertain terms.
“$20 a month to keep my blue check? F**k that, they should pay me,” he tweeted Monday, adding that he would quit the platform if Musk goes ahead with the verification fee. “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron,” wrote King.
Elon Musk responded by defending the fee, arguing that it is necessary to keep the company profitable and the only way to “defeat bots and trolls”. He did make an attempt at concession – asking if $8 a month sounded better than $20.
“We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” the Tesla chief tweeted in response to King.
“I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls,” Musk added in a follow-up tweet.
The Twitter owner faced a fair amount of trolling for what many saw as “bargaining”. Some jokingly compared the exchange to an interaction between a shopkeeper and customer at Sarojini Nagar Market – Delhi’s famous street shopping hub.
On the other hand, Stephen King also faced trolling for his tweet.
To accusations that he was being ‘cheap’ by refusing to pay, King clarified “It ain't the money, it's the principle of the thing.”
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