Elon Musk recently turned to horror legend Stephen King in a bid to explain his plans for overhauling the Twitter verification system. A move that solidified very plainly something we horror fans already know, Stephen King wins at Twitter.
King’s thoughtful recommendations, biting wit, tireless support of the genre at large, as well as his outspoken views on politics have repeatedly found the author trending on the platform over the years. A recipe that has made him one of the most influential and actively engaged voices on Twitter.
Musk is less than a week into his acquisition of Twitter and is wasting no time it seems in making sweeping changes to the company. In a tweet sent October 27th Musk outlined a very early vision for what he wants to achieve with Twitter and if true then it would honestly seem King is very much the type of user Musk is relying on.
These changes have not all been met with the same enthusiasm by the Twittersphere though. The backlash quickly led Musk to jokingly change his bio and profile picture to that of himself as a kid seemingly answering customer service calls.
#Darkmode
Though not a joking matter was a proposal of adding paid Twitter verification as part of a revamped Twitter Blue subscription which many users had an opinion on. Users like the massively popular horror author Stephen King who tweeted the following in response:
$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 31, 2022
Given the kind of following King has amassed on Twitter it only makes sense that his reaction to Musk’s suggestion of a $20 subscription to keep access to Verified status would turn heads. At the time of writing this article, the post has already been liked 469k times.
In a series of tweets, Musk responded to King directly asking for feedback as well as walking back the subscription price by over 50%.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Musk’s plan here is essentially a play at tackling several of Twitter’s core challenges, in his eyes, in one move. He asserts that in creating a paid verification program that spam/scam botting will become too expensive as well as creating a sustainable revenue stream for profit sharing with content creators. All of which on paper sound great if that is how it ultimately works out.
Many users remain guarded while others point out the irony of paying for a service where you are largely the product. Though it is possible that creating a paid service in support of the platform would help make it less reliant on commoditizing user data for revenue.
Amid all of this chaos though one thing is for sure the King has clout.
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