You could ask the same about paying for verification. But a very surprising number of people did that.

I agree with your core point in general, but the reality possibly is “lots of people”. The vast, vast majority of people appear to have stuck with TwitX because that’s where the people are. People aren’t moving to other places because the people aren’t there. A jillion organizations, “influencers”, wanna-be “influencers”, etc are still there because of inertia that surprisingly hasn’t run out.

And a whole bunch of idiots have paid for the blue checkmark because they are desperate for attention and think they’ll get more views that way. In many cases they’re right.

This move, I think, would be more likely to motivate people to move or avoid the platform, but it’s ridiculous to me how many people are left after all the other bullshit (including requiring logins, dropping blocking, all the right-wing propaganda and terrible recommendations in general, Musk’s behavior, at least a handful of people dropping the platform, etc).

He may be losing money and advertisers but holy shit are a bunch of people still there.