San Francisco will not pay for Twitter verification under Elon Musk’s new plan to remove blue check marks from users who do not subscribe to a monthly fee, officials said Friday.
In an email to more than 60 public information officials in the city’s agencies on Friday, the mayor’s office indicated that the city has no plans to pay for Twitter verification.
Musk has given April 1, as the deadline for public figures, journalists, government agencies and others currently verified for free to pay up or lose their verification badges. The billionaire owner and CEO of Twitter has referred to his plan — which offers blue check marks only to users who pay up to $11 a month — as “glorious.”
City officials join the White House and many prominent Twitter users in rejecting Musk’s latest moneymaking plan.
“It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service,” White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty told staffers in an email sent Friday afternoon obtained by Axios. “Thus, a blue check mark will now simply serve as a verification that the account is a paid user.”
Twitter introduced the free blue check marks 14 years ago to combat misinformation from accounts that impersonate individuals.
One of Musk’s first moves after buying the San Francisco-based social media company for $44 billion in October was to launch a service that grants blue check marks to anyone who pays $8 a month. But it was quickly inundated by imposter accounts, including those impersonating Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX.
The company later revised its criteria, issuing gold badges to brands and companies and gray checks for governmental organizations. Under the new plan, Twitter said it would charge businesses and organizations $1,000 per month to retain their verified status, plus a $50 monthly charge for each affiliated account.
On Friday, it revised that plan, saying it would waive the $1,000 monthly fee for its 500 largest advertising clients and for the 10,000 most-followed brands, companies and organizations, according to an internal Twitter document obtained by the New York Times.
The verification service for individuals costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for iPhone and iPad users. Subscribers receive fewer ads, can post longer videos, and have their tweets featured more prominently in the feed.
San Francisco supervisors expressed their opposition to Musk’s plan, with several stating that they will not pay for verification. Supervisor Hillary Ronen told The Chronicle she plans to remove her Twitter account, citing “Twitter’s culture of hate-filled dialogue that pushes people further apart and leads to less understanding.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin criticized Musk, saying that he will not pay for his blue check mark and that he has been in discussions with city administrators to ensure they have no intention of meeting the “ransom demand.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we shouldn’t be negotiating with terrorists and contributing to the delinquency of a crazed tech CEO,” said Peskin.
Supervisor Shamann Walton stated that he will not be paying for verification but noted that his Twitter account had been hacked and that he had not used the app at all. A representative from Supervisor Connie Chan’s office said that they had stopped using Twitter since Musk took over the company, and have no plans to return to the platform.
Several media organizations, including the New York Times, CNN, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, also this week said they would not pay Twitter for the feature.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reach Aidin Vaziri: [email protected]; Annie Vainshtein: [email protected]
