Twitter to charge businesses $1,000 per month for gold checkmarks, will remove badges from accounts that don’t pay

Last year, as part of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s rampant efforts to monetise the platform following his turbulent $44 billion buyout, Twitter announced that it would allow any user to purchase the once-sought after blue verification badge as part of the service’s pay-monthly Twitter Blue subscription, leading to a spate of significant impersonations and confusion on the platform as any user could purchase a blue badge and claim their account represented whoever they wished, with no clear way to differentiate genuine accounts from impersonators.

In an effort to stop bad actors, Twitter launched new gold verification badges to represent official business accounts on the platform, with the new gold badge not available to purchase or apply for, being strictly reserved only for genuine businesses on the platform.

Now that gold checkmarks have been applied to the vast majority of high-profile business accounts on Twitter, the platform now wants to cash in on the new verification type, with The Information claiming that Twitter will soon charge businesses $1,000 per month to keep their gold checkmarks, with the threat of removing them if they fail to pay.

Without the gold checkmark, businesses will once again be widely open to impersonation.

Twitter is reportedly emailing businesses offering gold check mark verification for $1000 PER MONTH!

And affiliate account verification for $50 each per month pic.twitter.com/hohTPKLKdi

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) February 3, 2023

Twitter hasn’t officially confirmed the plans, with The Information citing internal messages in the company that leaked to the news outlet on Friday.

Thanks for the tip, Louisa!