Twitter Verification was Always for Sale

New revelations following Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition show us more things we already knew.
As it turns out, the Blue Check Mark of Twitter verification has been a valuable commodity on the black-market of political influence nearly from the founding of the platform.
Now, as Musk plans to roll out the $8 Verification system and we hear celebrities and especially the mediaite Twitteratti complain that it will cheapen the platform, we are learning that their complaint isn't that there is a price, but rather that they feel cheated because their price was so much higher.