I mean, a dude who hates advertising just overpaid for a business that was underwater (and saddled it with an extra 1B$/yr in debt in the process) and whose SOLE SOURCE OF REVENUE was advertising. First thing, he chased off all the large corporate advertisers, most of whom were only still there because of inertia and business relationships with now-departed marketing guys at Twitter.
To replace this, he wants to charge a subscription for a service that people had been using because it was "free". Even if every blue check started paying eight bucks a month, that's a laughably small drop in the bucket compared to the revenue stream he'd need to stay above water.
The idea that Twitter is somehow going to instantly implode is silliness, of course, but unless he shits out a new revenue stream sometime soon, its prospects for still being around in a couple years don't look great.
People bitch and moan about the data harvesting and targeted algorithms, but that's literally the only thing that makes services like Twitter, YouTube, or [Facebook] viable.
In response to these sorts of questions, you get this...
...or this.
