Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and it’s now worth $20 billion after massive layoffs and various attempts at getting people to pay for something that’s been free since 2006. His big plan for scraping his way back to solvency is to remove “legacy checkmarks” and make people and organizations pay for check marks. Horror author Stephen King has something to say about this.
Musk tweeted on Tuesday that the “Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20.” Some companies, like The New York Times, have already seen its check mark disappear and refused to pay for one. While regular people only need to pay $8, organizations have to pay $1,000 a month to keep their blue checks.
Musk’s threat to end the checks didn’t really phase King, who loves taking shots at Musk.
So simple, but so fun. “Whoop” is already just a fun word. Adding “big” to it just makes it funnier. The deeper connotation here, of course, is that King is saying “no one cares.” While this might seem like a playful jab, it does speak to the fact that everyone could just decide not to pay. Or, find a different site to use. This wouldn’t be good for Musk.
Of course, a deadline from Musk is about as reliable as using a colander as an umbrella. Musk is pretty well known for his love of puns and memes, so there’s always the possibility that instead of removing check marks, we’ll get something dumb like weedcoin.
Musk previously said he was getting rid of checkmarks starting April 1. Unfortunately, Musk made it so you can’t really tell who has a legacy checkmark and who doesn’t, which kind of defeats the purpose. The description for a verified user reads: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.” Perfect!
