The pretense seems lovelier than the reality! So, when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he lured users to fancy the app by promising various new features. Even before he bought the platform, he promised to free Twitter from any kind of censorship and allow the flow of criticism. But, when he completed the $44 billion deal, he brought many radical changes on the platform and behind the scenes.
One of the decisions he took was to reduce the headcount of employees globally. So, he sacked more than half of the employees in November 2022. But, the most chaotic decision since he became the CEO was tweaking the ‘Twitter Blue’ feature which helps to prevent imitation of any world-renowned personalities, celebrities, politicians, etc., So, Musk introduced a subscription fee of $7.99 to have the blue tick. The decision did not turn out to be how he planned. Now, he is relaunching the feature, but the fee structure for iOS users will be different than what it is for others.
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Elon Musk Will Charge $11 To The iOS Users For ‘Twitter Blue’
Since 2021, the Tesla owner has had serious issues the charges on the App Store. In November 2022, the CEO of Twitter took on Apple alleging that they are threatening to take the app off their App Store. The store is the only place where users can access various apps. But, Apple has been incurring a 15-30% tax for “app moderation”.
Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
So, now, to evade the tax Elon Musk will be relaunching ‘Twitter Blue’ with the same fee i.e., $8, but Apple iOS users will face a surge of $3 to have the blue tick feature.
we’re relaunching @TwitterBlue on Monday – subscribe on web for $8/month or on iOS for $11/month to get access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark 🧵 pic.twitter.com/DvvsLoSO50
— Twitter (@Twitter) December 10, 2022
The company, in a tweet, said, “We’re relaunching @TwitterBlue on Monday — subscribe on web for $8/month or on (Apple’s) iOS for $11/month to get access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark”.
The new features include making emends to the tweets, uploading high-resolution (1080p) videos, and the “blue checkmark”. The check mark will be gray for the government officials and other administration officials and golden for the businesses.
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Tim Cook And Musk Have Reconciled
In a series of serious allegations, on November 28th, 2022, the South African billionaire accused the tech mogul of disposing off the app from their App Store. He called them out for the 30% tax that the app imposes on the users to reimburse the app reviewers.
The company took action on Fortnite and removed the game from their App Store when Epic Games tried to evade the tax. He also accused the company of having stopped the advertisements on the platform.
However, the new CEO met Tim Cook at the headquarters of Apple in Cupertino California. The two had good conversation and “cleared the air” on the conjectures . Cook and the company never wanted to do so.
But, there was a possibility that Twitter may be removed from the app store due to no content moderation on the app now that he has reinstated some of the controversial personalities like Donald Trump. But, there is no official statement about why the company has increased the fees for iOS users.
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