Elon Musk had said that he was planning to revamp Twitter’s verification process to help remove bots and spam accounts from the site.
However, according to sources within the company, his planned method is to expand the US$4.99 Twitter Blue service that currently unlocks additional features, into a subscription service that verifies users.
The price is subject to change but, according to documents seen by The Verge, employees were told about the news on Sunday. They have been given a 7 November deadline to implement the change or they will be fired. On Sunday, Musk also tweeted “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.”
Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Musk has made other big changes in his three days in charge. The homepage has been changed for logged out users, showing them top tweets on the platform, rather than showing them a signed in page. He is also reportedly planning a mass layoff of middle managers and engineers who haven’t recently contributed to Twitter’s code base. According to The Verge, those layoffs could begin as early as this week.
In practice, it seems like Musk is trying to root out the spam and bot accounts by making them pay. While it doesn’t seem as though paid verification will be mandatory for all Twitter users, the optics may drive some people away from the platform, which could be problematic for advertisers, and Twitter’s bottom line, alike.
Twitter has not responded to requests for comments on the story.
