I'm really skeptical that people are actually going to pay $8/month for verification unless you work in an industry where you absolutely have to be verified to do your job (journalism). I get the argument about trying to cut down on bots, but if most of your normal users forgo verification, I don't see how this helps on the bot front. This seems like a much bigger risk business-wise than tweaking moderation policies.
I honestly keep thinking it will have the opposite effect. Let's say a powerful entity uses bots to sway public opinion in various directions. If there is nothing more to the new check than paying $8/month then what is stopping said entity from throwing a million bucks (annually) at it and setting up 10,000 blue check bot accounts that now automatically rise to the top of the algorithms via their subscription? I guess we will see further details but this new system is supposed to be rolled out on Monday and I could see things going south pretty quickly.
A different way to look at it:
There are x number of current blue checks who will not want to pay $8 to keep their blue check. There are also x number of current non blue checks who will want to pay $8 to get a blue check.
Think people like Joe, small businesses in your community, entrepreneurs, content creators, up and coming entertainers, journalists, wanna be influencers. All people who did not pass Twitter's previous somewhat arbitrary requirements for a blue check.
Spending $100/yr to have a verified account, half the ads, ability to share video content, boost in search results, ability to edit tweets, plus whatever other perks they come up with down the road could be a solid value for someone who uses Twitter as part of their business or personal brand. The price is peanuts, and likely tax deductible for many.
As for bots, it is easy to set up a bot farm that operates thousands of accounts (China just got caught running 2000 bots to influence the 2022 midterms). Attaching a bank account to each bot account is not logistically possible, that fraud would be caught on the bank's end I assume. Attaching prepaid cards to each bot account to pay the $8 is probably possible for a small farm but no way China or Russia or whoever is taking the time and expense to manually setup prepaid cards and verified accounts for thousands of bots. And who knows what the actual Twitter Blue subscription process involves, I assume it requires a name, email, zip code same as premium subscriptions to Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn. It would be easier for the evil doer to just create more bots.
It will be interesting to see what Musk does to combat bots though. Bots have infiltrated most platforms (like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter) and none of the companies seem to care, they just look the other way while they juice their numbers for ad dollars and bonuses.