Bots are probably a very big problem for a small subset of Twitter users, like Musk himself, who is positively swarmed with them. But the median Twitter user is unlikely to care about this problem to the tune of several dollars a month. I get a crypto spam message about once every other day. I wouldn't pay anything to take care of that problem, because it's just not big enough to care about.

I think it's more likely that the real goal of this "Twitter Blue" proposal is to start getting users to pay for bling. Which could work! It certainly works in gaming communities.

Certainly, services for current blue-checks can't be a big part of the plan here, because of:

(1) The Stephen King problem, which is the (correct) observation that people like King are adding far more value to Twitter than they extract from it, and are reasonably not inclined to ante anything up to Musk.

(2) There aren't enough of them to make a dent in Twitter's cash flows.

checkmarks mean prestige, exclusivity, and validation. public figures and journalists love prestige, they live for it. twitter just removed one thing that made it attractive to them. being able to buy it means it s useless for anything other than removing spam

that s a very odd way to remove spam . and personally i dont see twitter bots because i dont go searching for them. Musk is completely obsessed with the wrong problem

If you can create a new account, pay $8 for a checkmark and run a viral promotion (or scam), it's certainly profitable.

Before you couldn't trust non-checkmarks. Now you can't trust any account.

I think anyone can, because later he mentions:

> There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587527711228149765

So, secondary tags are the new verification checkmarks and checkmarks are the new "Twitter+" status symbol.