Twitter’s biggest shareholder Elon Musk has proposed a host of changes to the social media giant’s premium subscription service, including reducing the price and allowing users to pay with the dogecoin cryptocurrency.
Twitter Blue launched in July 2021 and is the site’s first subscription service, currently available in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The service, which costs $2.99 (£2.30) a month, offers users a 30-second edit function to revise tweets, the ability to bookmark folders and a ‘reader mode’ to condense long threads.
But now the Tesla founder, just days after he disclosed a 9.2% stake in Twitterproposed several changes, including reducing the price and allowing users to play with dogecoin and local currency.
Users should also receive a tick similar to a blue verification tick, he said.
“The price should probably be [less than] $2/month, but paid 12 months in advance and account is unchecked for 60 days (watch for credit card chargebacks) and suspended without refund if used for scam/spam,” tweeted Mr Musk.
“And no advertising,” Mr. Musk suggested. “The power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly increased if Twitter depends on advertising dollars to survive.”
Twitter declined to comment on its suggestions.
Mr Musk also launched a poll on his Twitter account – which has more than 81 million followers – asking whether the company’s headquarters in San Francisco should be converted into a homeless shelter, because “nobody present (to work there)”.
The poll got more than 300,000 votes in one hour, with 90% answering “yes”.
Read more: Twitter confirms it’s working on an editing feature
After disclosing his stake, worth almost $3bn (£2.3bn), Musk was offered a seat on the company’s board, a move that has worried people Twitter employees.
Several employees who spoke to Reuters said Musk’s view on moderation could weaken years-long efforts to make Twitter a healthy place for discourse and could allow trolling and mob attacks. to thrive.
Following Donald Trump’s banning of Facebook and Twitter, the billionaire tweeted that many people would be unhappy with US tech companies acting “as the de facto arbiter of free speech.”
