 So I haven't talked about this in a while, but it's official Elon Musk is now owned by Twitter now to commemorate His reign as the emperor of Twitter. He carried a sink into Twitter HQ and he tweeted let that sink in Absolutely brilliant stuff here folks now What he's trying to do is he's trying to change Twitter to make it profitable because currently Twitter is not profitable And I understand that he paid a lot of money for Twitter more than he should have probably and he wants to make money off of this very Irresponsible investment, but his ideas aren't very good so far So he's trying to get people to pay money for a product. That's already free Right now. That's not inconceivable to be clear because YouTube has been a free service It's free to subscribe, but YouTube introduced YouTube premium now Why would people pay for YouTube premium? Well, because if you use the service enough it lets you bypass ads I for one pay for YouTube premium because I don't like watching ads So it's not inconceivable that somebody would give money for a product that they already use for free The problem is how do you make that worthwhile when it comes to Twitter? So his I guess idea currently It's not official yet But he's proposing that you remove features from the website that already exist And you force people to pay for said features to get them back Not necessarily something that's gonna go over too well If you're not just improving the site and you're stripping features away from people Nonetheless, one of those features was as the Hills headline reports here that they may begin charging $20 for verified users per month to maintain verification status Now reacting to this news a legendary author Stephen King tweeted out $20 a month to keep my blue check Fuck that. They should pay me if that gets instituted. I'm gone like and Ron. Yeah, and I agree with him I'm not going to leave the site if he begins charging $20 per month for verification. I Just wouldn't be verified. It's just not that important to me It doesn't make sense to pay $20 a month for internet cloud I mean the verification badge is there supposedly so that way if you are a public figure Then you know, it stops others from impersonating you They know that you're the real account holder of this thing, but it's not that important overall I mean $20 a month for verification status. It's just it's a really bad idea And I can't imagine anyone with the exception of Elon simps would give him $20 a month for verification now Elon Musk Responded to Stephen King and he tried to negotiate with Stephen King with a little bit of a guilt trip I guess he said we need to pay the bill somehow Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8? I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented It is the only way to defeat trolls and bots Twitter's got to make money somehow, but also. Oh, no, no It's not about the money. It's to defeat the trolls and bots Mmm, that doesn't seem like the best way to do it So it's already like he's just been the owner for like a week or so It's already not necessarily going very well use of the n-word has increased by 500 percent Because Elon Musk's fans feel emboldened that they feel as if oh well now This is a free speech platform and we could do things that we couldn't do before But really nothing has changed with regard to policy just a bunch of racists feel emboldened Now that a so-called free speech warrior is the owner of the website So look if he destroys Twitter, let me just say this. I don't care that much I use Twitter and I would prefer to have Twitter Because it helps me as a political commentator It kind of aggregates all of the news for me So I don't have to go to website after website to try to figure out what's happening and what I want to talk about So it's nice to kind of be able to keep in touch with people that way But in the event Twitter goes the way of the dodo. It's not the end of the world for me In fact, I think that my mental health would improve if Twitter went away and I didn't feel compelled to use it So, I mean, I'm not necessarily going to shed any tears if he destroys Twitter I'll be a little bit disappointed probably admittedly, but at the end of the day, it's not that big of a deal This is something that isn't Necessary for me as a content creator, right when I share my Twitter videos the conversion rate Isn't that high like I'm get maybe 50 to 100 views per tweet when I share my videos So I mean, it's just not that important at the end of the day to me Anyways, perhaps it's more important to independent journalists and whatnot who share their work that way But at the end of the day, I don't care that much now He did explain in a lengthier thread It was relatively short, but he tried to explain the way that this model would function and the proposed benefits But it somehow made less sense in the lengthier thread where he is offering clarification He writes Twitter's current lords and peasant system for who has or doesn't have a blue check mark is bullshit Power to the people blue for $8 a month You will also get priority in replies mentions and search Which is essential to defeat spam and scam ability to post long video and audio and half as many ads So first of all whenever a billionaire invokes lords and peasants and they pretend as if they're on the side of the peasants That already is just hilarious But to combat the current lords and peasant system What Elon Musk is proposing is that people pay eight dollars per month for Twitter and then they'll get boosted by the algorithm and priority in replies and The peasants are definitely gonna want to pay for that and therefore you're defeating the lords in the peasant system It seems like you're creating a lords and the peasant system by forcing people to pay because the peasants Aren't going to be able to afford to pay and a lot of the lords i.e. the blue check marks Why would they pay for this because verification again is just not that important It's just really it seeing this and seeing his rationale as you kind of like Vomits this up into Twitter in this thread It makes me think he's just not that bright all of this talk of him being a brilliant businessman I mean, it's all a facade. He's not that bright. These ideas are terrible. Are there ways to make Twitter profitable? I don't know but perhaps this isn't the way that you go about it and he's pretending as if Twitter ads are already like Too much. I really don't feel bothered by the ads. I see them from time to time They're not that common not enough to really inhibit the overall experience So it just feels like he doesn't have the best ideas and maybe billionaires aren't smart, right? Now he also adds that this is going to be a Boon for creators because this will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators So by charging content creators for verification Twitter will now have a revenue stream to pay content creators Pay them for what what additional content can content creators provide that warrants $8 per month I mean additional tweets who gives a shit. I am a huge fan of Ethan Klein of H3 for example I'm not gonna pay $8 per month to see special tweets if anything Maybe I'll pay for his YouTube membership for $5 per month so I can get access to behind-the-scenes videos But special tweets just not that important to me So he's trying to make Twitter seemingly more like YouTube and patreon, but it's just not the format for that like the platform doesn't fit It's incompatible with this format, but he's trying to find a way to make money and People in the replies to this were just like oh my god. It's amazing content creators would get paid Why would you believe that he already admitted that this is about making money? So it's not what he's doing to support content creators if anything this will hurt smaller content creators Who can't afford $8 per month or $20 per month or whatever he wants to charge? so overall it's just a terrible idea and I'm kind of enjoying watching it like again It's weird because I don't necessarily want Twitter to be destroyed by this idiot billionaire But at the same time the way that he's implementing these changing Changes or the way that he is thinking aloud about things that he wants to do is so hilariously bad and comical I just can't not look away like it's like a train wreck Like you have to watch right so you know he might destroy Twitter with all of these I think that what's going to happen is if he institutes these changes and He starts you know bleeding users then he's gonna back off of them because Ultimately he wants this to be a money-making venture because this is an investment that was very costly for him So I think that if it hurts his business, he's not gonna implement it But either way just seeing him try to find ways to Take money from Twitter users a free service is it's kind of funny it shows how out of touch these billionaires are because Nobody's gonna pay for a $20 verification badge or an $8 verification badge And if they do then that just to me tells me that that person is an idiot and they should be avoided on Twitter