News from the bathroom sink... Musk Calls 'Lords & Peasants' Blue Check System 'Bullshit' - Will Charge $8 Per Month After new Twitter owner Elon Musk responded to a temper tantrum by leftist horror author Stephen King over a rumored $20 per month charge to keep one's coveted 'blue check' status symbol on the platform, Musk has clarified what's going to happen; it'll be $8 per month (or $96 per year, or an inverted 69). We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8? — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022 In a series of Tuesday tweets, Musk said "Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit." "Power to the people! Blue for $8/month," he added. Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022 He then tweeted that prices 'by country' would be proportionate to purchasing power, and added that subscribers will receive 'priority in replies, mentions & search," and the "ability to post long video & audio" as well as "Half as many ads." You will also get: - Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam - Ability to post long video & audio - Half as many ads — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022 This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022 Earlier Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter would be ending the ability for Twitter Blue subscribers to access ad-free articles from publishers. Twitter Blue is a roughly year-old monthly subscription that offers premium features, such as an “undo tweet” option and access to ad-free articles from hundreds of publishers, including Vox, Los Angeles Times and Insider. The move comes as the company’s new owner, Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk, makes sweeping changes from high-profile firings to product updates since closing the $44 billion deal last week. Tuesday morning, Sarah Personette, Twitter’s chief customer officer, said on Twitter that she resigned on Friday. -WSJ No word on whether verified users will have 90 days to sign up for the $8 service or lose their coveted 'blue checks.' Last week former Twitter CFO suggested people would be willing to pay $49/month, and if not, shouldn't have been verified in the first place. None of these answers are high enough. People will pay $49/mth & if they won’t they should not have been verified to begin with. Perhap a better model is to charge a base verification fee then a per follower fee above a certain scale. Both ideas create many 2nd order benefits. — Anthony Noto (@anthonynoto) October 31, 2022 * * * Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation may recall the episode where extra-dimensional dickhead "Q" is stripped of his powers for spreading chaos throughout the universe. Well, Elon Musk just did that to Twitter's content moderation thought police with just weeks to go before midterms - cutting the number of employees who can access censorship tools from hundreds to around 15 people last week, and reducing their ability to influence discussion on the platform. According to Bloomberg, Musk and his 'war cabinet' have frozen some employee access to internal tools used for content moderation and the enforcement of other policies, neutering staff's abilities to 'alter or penalize accounts that break rules around misleading information, offensive posts and hate speech.' They also won't be able to banish highly credentialed doctors and researchers posting divergent Covid-19 narratives. All but the most 'high-impact violations set for manual review' will remain on the platform, according to people familiar with the matter. Twitter staff use dashboards, known as agent tools, to carry out actions like banning or suspending an account that is deemed to have breached policy. Detection of policy breaches can either be flagged by other Twitter users or detected automatically, but taking action on them requires human input and access to the dashboard tools. Those tools have been suspended since last week, the people said. This restriction is part of a broader plan to freeze Twitter’s software code to keep employees from pushing changes to the app during the transition to new ownership. Typically this level of access is given to a group of people numbering in the hundreds, and that was initially reduced to about 15 people last week, according to two of the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal decisions. Musk completed his $44 billion deal to take the company private on Oct. 27. -Bloomberg On Sunday,Twitter employees had limited access to the internal tools to police Brazil's presidential election. Meanwhile, the company is still using automated enforcement technology as well as third-party contractors. The restricted ability to restrict free speech has given Twitter's Trust and Safety Team the vapors - with employees worried that the company will be short-handed during the runup to the Nov. 8 midterm election. Recall the Trust and Safety Team was headed by now-fired Vijaya Gadde - who would have had a large role (perhaps even the final decision) to ban ZeroHedge in February, 2020 for suggesting that Covid-19 was the result of a lab leak (and that we 'doxxed' a Wuhan lab employee using publicly available data - aka not doxxing). Photo via Latestfinancenews Internally, employees say, Musk has raised questions about a number of the policies, and has zeroed in on a few specific rules that he wants the team to review. The first is Twitter’s general misinformation policy, which penalizes posts that include falsehoods about topics like election outcomes and Covid-19. Musk wants the policy to be more specific, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk has also asked the team to review Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, according to the people, specifically a section that says users can be penalized for “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” -Bloomberg On Monday, Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety and integrity, tweeted on Monday that the company was addressing an increase in offensive posts. "Since Saturday, we’ve been focused on addressing the surge in hateful conduct on Twitter. We’ve made measurable progress, removing more than 1500 accounts and reducing impressions on this content to nearly zero," he wrote, adding "We’re primarily dealing with a focused, short-term trolling campaign."