https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7k8mqb/elon-musk-wants-us-to-think-hes-at-war-with-the-elites

As Elon Musk and his lemmings have unfurled their plans for Twitter HQ, there have been an interesting range of defenses for the richest man in the world's widely-hated plans for the platform he was forced to buy. When it comes to layoffs at Twitter—Musk is poised to lay off at least 3500 employees, about half of the company—the strategy has been to simply go silent. When it comes to making people pay for verification, Musk’s defense has amounted to him and his friends posting through it and loudly declaring that this plan takes aim at "elites" and "lords" who currently have free blue checks.

Early reports revealed Musk sought to create a $20/month Twitter Blue subscription package for users interested in acquiring or retaining a blue check, with a November 7 deadline for engineers to build this or get fired. But days of complaints and some full-throated refusals to pay from prominent figures (specifically author Stephen King) have killed that plan. Enter its next iteration: an $8/month fee for a blue check and a host of features like fewer ads and priority on the site that would essentially make Twitter pay-to-play.