Elon Musk, the newly minted owner, chair and CEO of Twitter, says he wants to let anyone get verified on the platform for $8 a month, in exchange for being able to post longer messages and videos, and receiving fewer ads.

In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, Musk called the current system of verification a “lords & peasants system,” where prominent individuals have their identities verified by the platform and are acknowledged with a blue checkmark by their name.

The system was designed as a way to ensure that users could see if certain accounts were in fact who they were claiming to be, but the