Technology
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I doubt there's much overlap between verified accounts, which tend to be associated with corps, and people moving to fediverse.
Corporations and businesses may bear the monthly expenses for Twitter, but I doubt that ordinary users will spend money to participate in Twitter, as far as current median salaries go. There are going to be many who are going to send them to hell, looking for alternatives.
The proposal is to charge for verification which is the blue check mark. Regular users aren't affected by that.
I think that the point is that "regular users" also includes people who are neither a business nor a corporation but that are notable and active enough to have got the "verified" check-mark. Like a lot of individual popular figures and social media presences.
If a few of those big individuals ends up deciding to not pay up and instead moves to an alternative, the audience following them might be tempted to move as well to follow them up there, so it could potentially start a snowball effect.
That said, I don't believe the verification badge alone would be enough reason for them to move...
The assumption here is that people mostly stay on twitter for the content from blue checkmarks and that enough of them would move to other platforms. I personally have doubts about that. Vast majority of users aren't verified and tend to build networks with each other. If a verified account left the rest of their network is still on twitter.
Meanwhile, from the perspective of verified users they'd be losing access to their existing network. If this network is important to them then it's worth paying 20 bucks to keep it. And they always have the option of going unverified if they can't afford it.
I don't see where you find in my comment the assumption that people mostly follow verified accounts (if anything it's the other way around, one of the requirements for verification is notoriety, that doesn't mean that verification creates notoriety, nor that notoriety cannot exist without verification). Nor did I say that "enough" of them would migrate (enough for what exactly?). I was trying to be careful with my words and I used "if" when I meant "if", not "when".
I was simply explaining the other view point, not necessarily saying that it will happen, but that it's a possibility and it wouldn't be so surprising to see an increased interest towards Twitter alternatives as a consecuence from changes like this, perhaps translating to a (small?) spike of new users exploring the fediverse (even if it's possible most wouldn't stay). But I don't have a magic crystal ball so I can't tell you what will happen.
Your last paragraph is essentially part of what I was meaning to say in the last two lines from my previous comment. We agree.
(and btw, it wasn't me who gave you that downvote, to be clear)
Right, I should've perhaps phrased it differently. I meant to point out that the two assumptions would have to hold in order for any sort of user migration from twitter to happen, didn't mean to imply you were saying those would hold.