Looks like Musk is taking Twitter down the freemium route

If I seem to be dedicating a lot of space to Elon Musk and Twitter it’s because I think that the changes he is about to make to the platform will have major repercussions: Twitter is one of the world’s most important communication media, and Musk is one of the planet’s most influential people. A heady combination.

The latest news is the idea of charging users for account verification, the well-known blue checkmark, currently included in the Twitter Blue premium service, launched in June last year, and available only in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, at a monthly cost of $4.99.

Media reports suggest verification will now cost $20 per month, a fee that would include folders to store tweets and other items, the Undo option to edit tweets, a Reader Mode to more easily read items such as threads, user-configurable icons and themes, etc.

Twitter verification has typically been offered to users with a certain level of activity or who could be easily impersonated. Originally, it was the company that offered it to certain users — in my case, on August 17, 2012, via an email that allowed me to set it up immediately — and then moved to a request system that the company could approve or deny. That was later stopped when the company said it intended to review it, so associating it with…