New owner of Twitter Elon Musk now has announced that verification on the platform will cost users a monthly fee of US$20 a month as part of a new development to the app.

MassLive reported that Musk has ordered the team behind Twitter Blue, which offers an optional US$4.99 subscription to unlock additional features on the platform, to change it into a pricier subscription for users to be verified and stay verified for US$20 a month. Verification means having the famous blue check mark to a Twitter users profile, which confirms their legitimacy. 

Verified users will have 90 days to subscribe to this new plan or lose their blue checkmark status, The Verge reported.

Some users aren’t taking it so well, regardless if they themselves have the verification or not. Some have decided to make light of the situation.

Here’s the latest talk on the bird app about the blue check. 

An already verified user, Josh Vitale, tweeted on Sunday “I love my blue checkmark but there’s no chance I’m paying Elon US$20 a month for it.”

He then followed with “offended that he thinks a blue checkmark is worth more than HBO MAX,” which starts at US$9.99 per month.

Author Stephen King weighed in on the conversation.

“US$20 a month to keep my blue check? (Expletive) that, they should pay me,” he said. When a user replied to his tweet saying “It’s always the really wealthy ones that are the cheapest,” he promptly replied with “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”

More verified users are not seeming to be fans of the new subscription.

“If Twitter starts charging for blue checks, it will become extremely embarrassing to have one,” Lynn Bixenspan wrote.

Others seem to think it’s mortifying.

Hank Green, who is already a current Twitter Blue subscriber, said he’ll need to unsubscribe if they make verification conditional to having a subscription “because paying for a check mark is 100% cringe”.

“The way I’m going to judge people who pay to be a blue check,” another user said.

Many have said that when the monthly payment goes into place, the blue check will cease to have meaning.

“Take my blue check mark, Twitter. It’s all good. Also, it’s a great way to make it utterly meaningless. Musk isn’t that bright, folks,” Wajahat Ali said.

The new development might also cause some trouble for legitimate accounts.

“Charging for verification is how you get a lot of the legitimate accounts to drop their blue checks, and a bunch of spammers to buy them because it increases the chances they’ll be able to empty wallets,” Paris Marx, a non-verified user wrote.

“The idea of forcing people to pay for blue checks gets Twitter’s value proposition totally backward. For Twitter to have value, it needs to provide valid information from legitimate sources. If anyone can pay for the appearance of validity, the site losses all value,” said Max Berger.

Others have tried to keep the atmosphere on Twitter light with a few jokes.

“Who has a blue checkmark anyway? I been using this in dark mode it’s been a white check for years,” Akilah Hughes joked, meaning that if your iPhone setting is in dark mode as compared to light mode, the check is white and not blue.

“I will not be paying US$240 per year to Elon Musk to keep my blue check mark on Twitter. I don’t have a blue check mark, but that’s beside the point,” another joked.

 - TNS