Twitter is considering charging businesses on the platform $1,000 a month to retain their gold-verified checkmarks.
According to a report from The Information, companies, and organizations that fail to pay the fee will lose their badges, although it's not clear when. Internal messages viewed by the outlet suggested that it will cost $1,000 a month to keep gold badges and another $50 a month for each 'affiliated account'.
That claim corroborates a leaked email from a Twitter staff member to an unknown organization in which it was offered 'early access' to 'Verification for Organizations.' In the email, dated February 2 and shared by social media analyst Matt Navarra, the staff member, Evan Jones, quoted the same $1,000 cost of subscription and offered the organization a 'gold checkmark' in return.
The change is the latest of many that Twitter's new owner and CEO Elon Musk has taken in an attempt to boost revenue and turn the company profitable. That includes mass layoff that saw its workforce halve in size from around 7,500 before the acquisition, WSJ reported.
It comes just months after Musk made the controversial decision to charge ordinary Twitter users $8 a month for its classic blue checkmarks.
The introduction of the $8 subscription happened around the same time businesses and organizations were assigned the new gold checkmarks and square profile pictures, as opposed to the round ones of old.