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It'll be interesting to see if there is a mass exodus but really to me that is completely beside the point.

Even if Twitter isn't close to crossing the thermocline, they're still in tough.

In the big scheme of social media Twitter is small. And now they have a gigantic debt to service, far in excess of their ability to do so with existing revenue.

$8 for blue checkmarks is a drop in the bucket, they'd need every single current blue checkmark to pay AND 25 MORE people to pay for every single current blue checkmark just to service the debt. That's not happening unless they grow Twitter by a factor of 25.

And there isn't enough broad appeal to grow Twitter by that much, people already see it as toxic and negative overall.

Trying to monetize this feature or that feature isn't going to help much, they need to increase advertising revenues by a huge amount, which means increasing user count a huge amount and they won't do that by decreasing moderation.

EDIT: It's also hilarious that Musk thinks it's about the actual cost of the blue checkmark. People are willing to pay for value, if there's no value then they will complain about the price. Ignoring the fact that all Musk's talk about free speech is totally ignored now.