How Many People Are Willing to Pay to Be Blue on Twitter?

If you spend time on Twitter, you’re probably pretty distressed over what’s become of it since it was purchased by Chief Twit Elon Musk. 

As opposed to what happens in most corporate changes, the company has done nothing to reassure loyal employees, devoted users, and steadfast advertisers that they’re in capable hands. It has been very much the opposite, with Musk firing half of Twitter’s employees (and then trying to rehire some), suspending anyone parodying him, scaring advertisers away, and using Twitter to threaten to “name and shame” those who he feels have given in to activist groups.

Musk has been posting decrees like the Sun King shouting out rules at Versailles, so it’s hard to know what is actual policy and what is a whim. But much like in pre-revolutionary France, the two things are often the same. And so, after floating multiple ideas for monetizing the blue checks of Twitter and debating the idea with the world’s best-known horror writer, Musk has (for now) settled on a two-tiered system of users: Blue, for those who will pay $7.99 for a blue check and some services; and the great unlabeled, the majority of Twitter users. (Briefly today, there was a third option: Official, which bestowed a gray check mark and the word “Official” for select accounts, but Musk killed that almost immediately.)

Tweet(Opens in a new window)

All About Cookies surveyed 1,250 adults in the United States to see whether they would be willing to pay for the Twitter Blue experience(Opens in a new window). Out of those who use Twitter (971 of the surveyed), 44% said they wouldn’t pay anything for verification—but 28% would pay the $8. 

While the new Twitter blue check will do little more than identify those who subscribe to Blue, 54% thought the verification badge will help determine which accounts to trust on the platform. So of course, this presents the potential for people to be misled by (even more) misinformation and scams(Opens in a new window), because they put their faith into something that once stood for a verification system but is now the emblem of pay-for-play. 

Those surveyed had a fairly positive outlook about Musk’s ownership. When asked what they expect from the content quality of Twitter under Musk, 38% said they expect it to improve, and 33% said they think content will become more trustworthy. It should be noted that this survey was taken before Musk tweeted out an unfounded and disproved conspiracy theory about an attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, not one(Opens in a new window) but two Nazi memes(Opens in a new window), and the suspension of accounts that parodied him after he declared, “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”

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