Earlier quoted context omitted.
My gut instinct is that the right price for verification is something like $1000 as a one-time fee. Lots of people who are active Twitter users will find that fee useful at some point in their life (as a business marketing expense), and Twitter will likely extract a lot more from them by charging $1000 once rather than $8/month.
Influencers and hustlebros will pay that, celebrities won't. If the celebrities leave, Twitter dies.
> "Stephen, I'm trying to market your books, but the publishers aren't seeing any engagement on Twitter".
> "Oh I left because I don't want to pay $20 / month to someone I disagree with politically."
> "Have you been hitting the bottle again?"
End of conversation. The value most of these celebrities get vastly exceeds $20 / month. The Twitter-celebrity relationship is symbiotic, nor parasitic.