SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – New Twitter owner Elon Musk has already been making waves at the San Francisco-based company. Midday Tuesday he stated “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bull—-” and proposed a new $8 per month cost to being verified.

Verification on the platform gives users a blue checkmark next to their name, to ensure tweets are really coming from them.

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Musk stated in a series of tweets that the $8 per month cost will give users “Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam,” “ability to post long video & audio” and “half as many ads.”

For “publishers willing to work with us” there will be “paywall bypass.”

Musk continued that “this will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators.”

Musk had originally proposed $20 per month for the blue checkmark. That prompted a negative reaction from author Stephen King, who tweeted “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F— that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

Musk wrote back “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8? I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”