Stephen King is someone who is known for calling a spade a spade. The 75-year-old author has called out several high-profile celebrities in the past for their problematic behavior, like Donald Trump. He has now called out the new blue checkmark policy of Twitter after Elon Musk took over.
Musk has been making changes in the company ever since the acquisition was finalized. He fired Twitter’s CEO and CFO along with several top executives. The Tesla CEO has now decided to charge people for a verified blue tick profile on the platform. King has responded to that.
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Elon Musk Responds To Stephen King On Charging For Blue Tick
There have been reports that Musk wanted to charge verified users $20 per month to keep their blue checkmark status on Twitter. This hasn’t gone well with most users, and celebrated author Stephen King is one of them.
The ‘Carrie‘ author took to the platform and wrote, “$20 a month to keep my blue check?” “Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
When a user told King he could afford the fee, King responded, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.” He enjoys 6.9 million followers on the platform where he is often active.
We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
On Tuesday, Musk responded to that tweet. “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot entirely rely on advertisers. How about $8?”, he asked. He then added, “I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”
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Jack Dorsey Retains His Stake On Twitter
Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey has decided to retain his stake after Musk’s acquisition. The SpaceX founder had said that he had been in talks with Dorsey to roll over his stake.
Dorsey owned more than 18 million shares which are valued at around $1 billion. His action has ended up saving Musk approx $1 billion in his purchase price.
With this rollover, Jack continues to be one of Twitter’s largest shareholders, after only Musk and Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, who rolled over about $1.9 billion worth of stock.
Right after the deal was finalized, there was a sudden surge in use of N-words on the platform. It was mostly inauthetic accounts trying to test the censorship bar of Twitter.
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