Elon Musk hops onto meme trend to justify charging for Twitter blue tick; See what he did

Ever since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, the SpaceX CEO has been actively making efforts to reduce the microblogging site's reliance on advertisers. Therefore, he has now decided to charge $8 to those who are verified on Twitter with a blue tick, which includes celebrities, politicians and journalists. 

Following the decision, the head of Tesla and SpaceX received a major backlash from prominent politicians and other public figures. However, Musk being Musk took this outrage on a lighter note and shared a meme, raising the question that if one can pay $8 for a Starbucks coffee which gets finished within minutes, why can't one pay the same amount for a blue tick for 30 days every month. 

Earlier, Musk had explained his rationale by tweeting on November 1 that "Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is b*****it. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month." 

"Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity. 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. This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators. There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians," he added. 

Elon Musk to start charging users for Verification Badge on Twitter 

Meanwhile, as per a few media reports, Musk would implement a charging model by the next week. Citing its sources in the microblogging site, Bloomberg reported that the world's richest man has informed the technical team to implement the subscription model for the verified users by Monday, November 7. It means that verified users, who enjoy the feature of blue tick check mark will have to pay $8 a month. Further, it claimed that users with a verified badge will have a multi-month grace period on their decision, they will either need to pay for the badge or lose the badge.

Image: Twitter/@elonmusk