Elon Musk pledged to make getting rid of spam accounts one of his main priorities after buying Twitter – but there’s another mounting exodus that he perhaps did not intend.
Fears over the SpaceX founder’s potentially loose stance on content moderation has plenty of genuine users considering their future on the platform, including some of its famous faces.
So while Twitter could before too long welcome back some of its most infamous banned accounts – chief among them Donald Trump – it may soon be saying goodbye to even more.
Here’s a running list of the celebrities who are fleeing the nest… or threatening to do so.
Stephen King
The horror author has been a consistent tweeter for almost nine years, but said he’d quit if Musk goes ahead with reported plans to move Twitter’s verification badges behind a paid subscription.
“$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*** that, they should pay me,” he tweeted to his 6.9 million followers.
“If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
“We need to pay the bills somehow!” replied Musk, the world’s richest man.
“Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”
Musk has since confirmed the company will charge $8 a month as part of a Twitter Blue membership.
Toni Braxton
Grammy-winning R&B artist Braxton has already headed out – telling her two million followers she was “shocked and appalled at some of the ‘free speech'” she had seen on Twitter since the Musk deal closed.
A commitment to free speech was at the heart of Musk’s pitch for the site, though he has insisted he will not let it become a so-called “free-for-all hellscape”.
Braxton said: “Hate speech under the veil of ‘free speech’ is unacceptable; therefore I am choosing to stay off Twitter as it is no longer a safe space for myself, my sons and other POC.”
Sarah Bareilles
Another Grammy winner, Bareilles has also gone through with her departure.
“Welp. It’s been fun Twitter. I’m out,” she wrote.
“See you on other platforms, peeps. Sorry, this one’s just not for…
Source : skynews
