Not really an obstacle to tweeting.

It’s nothing other than making people pay for a status symbol.

Hopefully not. At 5$ I would hope they would actually check the account marked as verified is actually the individual/etc that they claim to be ...

It’s a status symbol now. If it becomes a paid feature of privately owned Twitter then, whether they like it or not, it’s going to become a badge that says the owner supports an incredibly divisive specific person.

> Those verified active users are the lifeblood of the platform, but there can't be that many of them to justify rolling unnecessary obstacles in front of them.

They bring money to Twitter how exactly? That whole "verified" scheme was always a joke, given who gets to be verified or unverified. Either it's about real identities or it's a worthless ideology approval badge.

> They bring money to Twitter how exactly?

They draw an audience to the platform and they tweet things that journalists want to write about which is free advertising for Twitter that draws more of an audience.

Exactly. It would make more sense to pay them.