Twitter users may have to begin paying for blue verification badges as soon as early next week, sources tell Bloomberg.
The coveted blue check mark is part of an $8-a-month subscription plan that could go live as early as Monday, the news outlet reported. Users who already have the verification badge on their account profile will have a few months to either pay for the badge or lose it, the unidentified sources said.
Twitter also plans to make the edit function, which is currently available through a $5-a-month Twitter Blue subscription, available to all users for free, Bloomberg reported. That change could come as soon as this week.
Not long after tech billionaire Elon Musk closed his $44 billion deal for Twitter late last week, he began making changes to the platform, including firing key executives and proposing a new content moderation council. Charging for blue verification check marks is just one of his makeover ideas intended to extract more revenue from the social platform.
Twitter provides verified badges to accounts for free after the company determines the user is “authentic, notable and active.” But Musk suggested Tuesday that he wants to charge $8 a month for a subscription plan that would add a verified check mark to users’ accounts.
An earlier report that Musk planned to charge $20 per month for the check mark irked some high-profile Twitter users, including author Stephen King, who tweeted his disgust for the plan with a profanity and said he’d exit the platform if it were implemented. That led Musk to suggest an $8 price tag instead.
The same day, The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter Blue subscribers will lose access to ad-free articles from publishers like Vox, the Los Angeles Times and Insider.
Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
