Crazy Twitter Dispute: Elon Musk Pays for Stephen King’s Tick

You were recently asked to pay for the well-known blue and white check mark on Twitter. Unless your name is Stephen King and you are the master of the horror genre. Apparently, the American bestselling author is now getting his hook as a gift from Twitter boss Elon Musk.

How do we know? King publicly wondered about Twitter on Twitter. He wrote, “My Twitter account tells me I’ve signed up for Twitter Blue. But I haven’t. According to my Twitter account, I’ve given my phone number. But I haven’t.”

Musk, in turn, responded to a tweet from Pop Base about the hook issue with the words “Just Shattner, LeBron and King.”

This means that the American entrepreneur does not only give his blue hook to King. NBA star LeBron James (Los Angeles Lakers) and “Spaceship Enterprise” captain William Shatner also received their hook without paying.

No more verification

Actually, the blue check mark once stood for trusting a Twitter account. Thanks to the symbol, followers knew a “real” celebrity, politician or journalist was tweeting, not a fake.

Elon Musk is changing that and turning the hook into a new source of income. The blue and white symbol now costs the account holder CHF 10 per month. It can be purchased by all Twitter users regardless of their fame.

Musk has endured a lot of criticism for this. Does this mean that the opinions spread via Twitter are no longer so easy to classify? For example, if a lobby group buys thousands of blue ticks for accounts that spread the desired opinion, it can have a major impact on opinion formation and trends.

Sources

(t-online/dsc)