This shouldn't be a surprise, given I've heard many times over the years about how 'hard' such influencers had to work (nagging twitter employees, leveraging content agencies, etc.) to get such checkmarks. It was an exclusive club, nobody likes it when their cool club gets ruined by plebians.
That said, I don't think Elon's plan will work all the same, but for different reasons. I've seen people donate $100USD multiple times to send abusive messages to streamers. $20/mo is too low a threshold to gatekeep bad actors.
Well, it's not like the blue ticks are going to lose their account.
They can continue to tweet and I don't think there is going to be an exodus away from Twitter. It really really has a decent volume of people already who don't care about who owns the site. And there is going to be an influx of right wingers who feel emboldened by Elon's purchase.
If they go somewhere else, they may have to rebuild their audience once again. (For example, I follow some YouTubers who are quite massive on YouTube but not so much on other sites. I suspect there are those with huge Twitter followings but not everywhere else who would hate to redo their entire brand building by migrating away). Though some of these people may be willing to do so.
And then there are people who might be massive in terms of their influence on all social media sites, so they would lose one avenue to communicate with their followers by migrating away from Twitter. (though this would depend on the person themselves. Some may object to being on Twitter going forward conscientously and may choose to leave.)
My guess is people may use something else to prove they are verified but would lose the coveted "blue tick".
My guess is politicians, actors and business people (ie those who are often parodied by fake accounts) may end up keeping it.
The reason for politicians is obvious. Imagine if a unverified Twitter account for a politician declares war on another country. Also,this means that technically the taxpayers are going to pay for it).
Actors and business people is also obvious as they are usually influential people and someone can misuse their names to run a crypto scam. Hell, I have seen dozens of fake Elon Musk accounts all over social media advertisting crypto giveaways.
That said, I don't think Elon's plan will work all the same, but for different reasons. I've seen people donate $100USD multiple times to send abusive messages to streamers. $20/mo is too low a threshold to gatekeep bad actors.