Well, Twitter's no longer public so they won't benefit from any long term stock price appreciation. I wonder if there's any other bonus structure in place, or if Elon plans to cut everything to the bone.

If the $8/mo is a good pivot, then sure. And there's lots of reasons to think it's not. E.g. I pay $15/mo to access the entire Netflix library. I'd pay roughly half that to do what exactly? To get a blue checkmark?

It would be different if Twitter pivoted and went towards the Cameo model where people pay for a celebrity's well wishes or say getting an expert viewpoint on demand.