Now he's trying to walk back his mistake.
In 2022, when Elon Musk campaigned to buy Twitter —before he realized he would be massively overpaying and went to court to get out of the deal he himself proposed, before he admitted defeat and took over the company in a $44 billion leveraged buyout—he promised to restore “free speech” to the site.
He vowed to right the wrongs of a dual-class system that had benefited the haves at the expense of the have-nots—and he homed in on the blue check marks slapped on verified accounts as the culprit enabling this disparity. On his first day as owner of the site, Musk, “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.
So, a year ago, Elon Musk took blue check marks away from anyone who refused to pay him money. This week, he started giving them back for free. While Musk wanted to frame the removal of blue check marks as some great anti-elite democratization, some Robin Hood–esque pursuit of justice, in reality it was always a money-making proposition. If Musk could make more money directly from users in the form of recurring subscription revenue, he’d reduce the company’s dependence on advertisers and their demands about what merits acceptable content on the site.
This week, however, X began alerting many of the less famous but still popular accounts that had their blue check marks removed that they’d be eligible for a free subscription to X Premium—and thus the reinstatement of their blue badge.
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