Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has ignited debate on social media after revealing that one will need to part with $8 per month or or an equivalent of Sh972 to have the Twitter verification badge.

Musk, who is currently the world’s wealthiest man and also owns SpaceX, says the current system for acquiring the blue checkmark is discriminatory to many Twitter users worldwide.

“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.

The tech entrepreneur, who is worth $221.2 billion, says the monthly fee for the blue checkmark will be adjusted according to a user’s country’s purchasing power parity.

He outlined the other benefits one will get when they subscribe to the blue badge.

“You will also get: Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam, Ability to post long video & audio, half as many ads and paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us,” he went on in the Twitter thread.


Musk says the money Twitter will rake in from the Blue Checkmark subscription will be used to remunerate content creators on the popular social media platform.

“This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” he ended the Twitter thread.

Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc on Friday and fired CEO Parag Agrawal, head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, CFO Ned Segal, and general counsel Sean Edgett.

The business magnate and investor made his $44 billion offer for the social media platform in April, 2022 with the price deemed too high coming after he built his stake in Twitter

is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and product architect at Tesla Inc; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI as well as the president of the Musk Foundation.