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Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses on the red carpet of the Axel Springer Award 2020 on December 01, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images)Getty Images

A new report from Mashables Matt Binder says that more than half of Twitter Blues earlier subscribers are no longer subscribed at all. 54% of the 150,000 users who signed up when Elons new Twitter Blue launched in November are no longer subscribing.

With advertising way, way down, Musks plan has always been to drive up subscriptions, mainly with the draw of a verified blue check that is for say for $8-11 a month, which he took away from everyone who had it for free, verified under the old system. Thats except for celebrities and public figures with over a million followers, where hes just giving it to them to ensure there remains some appearance of validity to the system.

Now, a user has suggested that Musk should open up Twitter Blue to allow for gifted subscriptions, to which he replied Ok. A short statement, perhaps, but one that does seem somewhat inevitable. If you cant get people to sign up on their own, let Blue superfans start throwing out gifted subscriptions to 1, 5, 10 of their friends if they want.

Of course this raisesobvious questions. The signature hallmark of the Twitter Blue system is the blue check. So first, this essentially destroys Musks argument that the new blue check is better for fighting bots because you have to have a credit card attached to your account. Now, you just needa friend with a credit card.

Then, the second thing. If gifting a Twitter Blue subscription didnt just give your friends access to the features of the system like longer video uploads and tweet editing, but also gave them a blue check, which many current users no longer want, given its association with Musk and his acolytes, it feels like a almost a weaponization of the checkmark. Someone making fun of you for your blue check? Troll them with a sub that gives them one too.

You cannot really have the option to turn off the check because Musk wants it advertised that loads of Twitter users are subscribing to Blue (loads are not, despite what the first ten people in your replies may indicate). I feel like the only solution here would be toallow people to reject gifted subscriptions? This runs counter to the idea of places where gifted subscriptions work and are universally viewed as good in places like Twitch and Discord. This all circles back around to Musk forcing the check mark as a forced public indicator of your subscription, along with auto-surfacing your replies, when really all you may want is better video, lists and editing capabilities. Thats a gifted sub I would have no problem accepting, if it was just that. But I very much do not want to be a Twitter Blue Guy and I dont think most other people want that, either.

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Ive been writing about video games, television and movies for Forbes for over 10 years, and you may have seen my reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. I cover all manner of console and PC games, but if its about looting or shooting, Im definitely there. If Im watching something, its usually science fiction, horror or superheroic. Im also a regular on IGNs Fireteam Chat podcast and have published five sci-fi novels.

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Elon Musk Threatens To Implement Gifted Twitter Blue Subscriptions - Forbes

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Serial entrepreneur, founder of multiple multi-billion dollar companies the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter Elon Musk opened up more about his personal life yesterday.

He wrote a long tweet to clarify the confusion surrounding his teenage life, early career, and inheritance from his family especially his fathers emerald mines.

Just recently, some of the mainstream media outlets published stories of how Elon Musk thrived so much inheriting a fortune mainly from the emerald mine his father owned in the past.

I grew up in a lower, transitioning to upper, middle income situation, but did not have a happy childhood. Havent inherited anything ever from anyone, nor has anyone given me a large financial gift, Elon Musk started the tweet with this paragraph.

Elon Musk outright denied getting any financial assistance to build his business empire in the United States.

The rumors of Elon Musk inheriting a fortune from his fathers apartheid emerald mine or slave emerald mine are not new. These rumors first started appearing on social media back in 2013 and Musk has denied these rumors in the past as well. But this time, he went into a bit of detail.

For example in the following tweet from Dec 2019, Elon Musk said that he ended up in a ~$100k student loan despite working through college. He couldnt even afford a 2nd computer at his company Zip2.

The emerald mine rumors once again started picking up pace after Elons father Errol Musk gave an interview to The Sun last month. Errol said that he actually owned an emerald mine in Zambia (near Lake Tanganyika).

Elon Musks father even went on to say that his son knew about the mine when the family lived together in South Africa. And precious stones kept coming to them from time to time and Elon Musks sister even owned some of them.

Errol says that he used the money from his emerald mine to send his sons Elon and Kimbal Musk to North America. Though he admitted that this emerald mine was kind of a protruded rock, not an actual mine (the story he told The Sun is highly interesting but hard to swallow at the same time).

Elon Musk had to compose a long story responding to this emerald mine rumor because a Community Note on Twitter tagged a mainstream news story as a source of confirmation of this gossip. At the request of the community, this note was later on removed from the social media platform.

Heres the complete post in Elon Musks words:

I grew up in a lower, transitioning to upper, middle income situation, but did not have a happy childhood. Havent inherited anything ever from anyone, nor has anyone given me a large financial gift.

My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me.

That said, he does deserve credit for teaching me the fundamentals of physics, engineering and construction, which is more valuable than money, but did not support me financially after high school in any meaningful way.

Our condition of providing him financial support was that he not engage in bad behavior. Unfortunately, he nonetheless did. There are young children involved, so we continued to provide financial support for their well-being.

Regarding the so-called emerald mine, there is no objective evidence whatsoever that this mine ever existed. He told me that he owned a share in a mine in Zambia, and I believed him for a while, but nobody has ever seen the mine, nor are there any records of its existence.

If this mine was real, he would not require financial support from my brother and me.

Elon Musks mother Maye Musk also commented on his tweet and said the family moved to Toronto in 1989 in a one-bedroom apartment. The family later on moved to another apartment and that she never heard of an emerald mine until the rumors started on Twitter about 10 years ago.

I only briefly lived with my Mom tbc [to be clear] lol, Elon Musk stated in a reply to his mothers above tweet.

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Stay tuned for more Elon Musk news, and videos. Follow us on:Google News|Flipboard|RSS (Feedly).

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Elon Musk denies any knowledge of the emerald mines or inheriting anything from his father - Tesla Oracle - Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX News

The mother of Elon Musk, the eccentric billionaire owner of Twitter and Tesla, enjoyed visiting Santorini but evidently did not leave Greece after her professional duties and is now soaking up the views and joys of Hydra.

Hello Hydra, Greece. I spent a wonderful day exploring this beautiful island," Maye Musk wrote on Twitter before thanking CAA Speakers and Golden Yachts.

Days earlier she turned to Twitter again to show off her snaps from Santorini.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk quashed claims that his father Errol Musk used emeralds from an "under the table" mine to finance him and said he didn't have a happy childhood and grew up in lower middle income situation.

His mother Maye Musk replied, "When we moved to Toronto in 1989, we stayed in a one-bedroom apartment until I found a rent-controlled apartment."

The Twitter owner wrote on his platform: "I grew up in a lower, transitioning to upper, middle income situation, but did not have a happy childhood. Havent inherited anything ever from anyone, nor has anyone given me a large financial gift.

"My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me.

"That said, he does deserve credit for teaching me the fundamentals of physics, engineering and construction, which is more valuable than money, but did not support me financially after high school in any meaningful way.

"Our condition of providing him financial support was that he not engage in bad behavior. Unfortunately, he nonetheless did. There are young children involved, so we continued to provide financial support for their well-being.

"Regarding the so-called 'emerald mine', there is no objective evidence whatsoever that this mine ever existed. He told me that he owned a share in a mine in Zambia, and I believed him for a while, but nobody has ever seen the mine, nor are there any records of its existence.

"If this mine was real, he would not require financial support from my brother and me."

READ MORE: Salt Bae accused of "God complex" and stealing tips from staff.

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Elon Musk's Mother Maye Is Now In Hydra! - GreekCityTimes.com

The past week saw the release of the Labor Department's non-farm payrolls report, which was more positive than expected. In April, U.S. employers added 253,000 jobs, ahead of the consensus estimate of 180,000.

Still, on Saturday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk used a certain data point to seemingly reiterate his view that the Federal Reserve is committing a mistake by basing its rate decisions on lagging indicators.

The Labor Department revised its job figure for March from 236,000 to 165,000 a move that appeared to take the sheen off the April number, wrote conservative blog site Zerohege in a tweet on Friday.

"Instead of a beat, would have been a huge miss," it tweeted.

In response to the tweet, Musk wrote, Almost like there's latency in their data, so things are worse than they realize"

See Also: How To Invest In Startups

Ahead of last week's Fed decision, the billionaire warned that another hike from the countrys central banking system could push the countrys economy into a deeper recession. At a recent meeting, the Fed made the decision to raise rates to a 16-year high of 5-5.25%.

Although the Fed's post-meeting statement was tweaked to remove references to "further rate increases," Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted that the central bank may not be done with hikes just yet.

Read Next: White House Economist Says Feds Rate Hikes Having Negative Impact On Banking Sector Yes, You Read It Right!

Photo: Thomas Hawk via flickr

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Elon Musk Sounds The Alarm On Economic Outlook Despite ... - Benzinga

One aspect of MrBeasts channel is his philanthropic work. The YouTuber has always strived to give whatever he earns from his video back to his community. His latest video also follows the same pattern. In this video, MrBeast provided cutting-edge hearing aids to 1000 deaf people.

Although what seems like a noble deed has come under fire from many users online. They are accusing him of using disabled people to gather views. Furthermore, this has started a very heated debate all over the internet. And a person accustomed to handling heat from hoards of internet haters has come to defend MrBeast.

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Recently, journalist Ed Krassenstein started a discussion on Twitter on the topic focusing on MrBeasts latest video. He spoke in favor of the YouTuber, stating he was doing good for the masses. Whether he was gaining subscribers or not should be of no concern to people. He thinks MrBeast himself would not be thinking about the subscribers gained from this video. He raised a question for the people targeting the YouTuber, saying, Shouldnt people who can be cured of deafness be taken care of?

The discussion got a comment from Elon Musk, who believed people should not be attacked for doing good. Furthermore, he accused people of looking at everything from a monetary standpoint and not by how much good it does.

The Twitter CEO has also wished to donate to the cause MrBeast showcased in the video.

Musk also shared that while he wishes to donate money, people always take it from the wrong perspective. It is very hard to donate money if you about it doing actual good, not merely the appearance of it, he said.

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This led to Krassenstein commenting MrBeast and Musk should talk the details out and arrange to help even more people. He partially joked, Maybe the first sound these people hear could be the launch of the next Starship test flight. Krassenstein has inadvertently shared what was in the hearts of many fans who want Musk and MrBeast to collab.

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What are your thoughts on Elon Musk coming to defend MrBeast? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Elon Musk Comes To The Rescue of MrBeast, Saves Him From the Criticism On His Recent Video - EssentiallySports