Report: Elon Musk Considers Putting Twitter Behind Paywall

According to a recent report, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is considering putting the entire website behind a paywall after mass layoffs at the company and a new update to the site’s Twitter Blue premium service. This would require users to pay to even read content on the site.

Breitbart News recently reported that following Elon Musk’s dismissal of roughly half of Twitter’s workforce last Friday, the company is now asking dozens of employees to return work. According to two people familiar with the situation, some of the people being asked to return were laid off by mistake. In relation to others, management only realized after they had been laid off that their work and experience would be crucial to Musk’s vision of developing new features.

Musk’s acquisition of the company closed late last month, resulting in Twitter cutting close to 3,700 employees via email in an effort to save costs. Many employees were notified that they had been fired when they suddenly lost access to company-wide platforms like email and Slack.

Now that Musk is asking some to return to the company, he has reportedly begun micromanaging many planned projects, including the Twitter Blue paid premium service. Musk has said that for $8 a month, anyone on the platform will soon be able to be verified, receiving a blue checkmark next to their name.

Platformer reports that according to meeting notes shared with employees in Slack, all changes to Twitter Blue are required to be run by Musk. “There is one decision-maker and that is me,” Musk reportedly told workers. “Any detail of Twitter Blue must be clear w/ him down to the last detail,” the meeting notes added.

However, all of this could foreshadow the most significant change to Twitter so far: charging users a subscription fee to use the site. A person familiar with the matter said that Musk and his advisor David Sacks have recently discussed this idea in meetings. A time limit may be placed on the platform, requiring a subscription to continue browsing Twitter, according to the source.

Twitter declined to comment on how serious Musk and Sacks are about creating a paywall. It’s also not clear if the Blue team will be able to finish the expanded verification project in time for the launch, as they are wholly dedicated to it.

Despite Twitter’s large debt load and the recent lull in big ad spending, it is obvious that Musk and his close advisors will have to do something to raise revenue significantly. Either way, it seems that Twitter will be undergoing major changes very soon.

Read more at Platformer here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan