Musk doesn't understand the platform he bought, so he promised to change the existing identify verification system – part of a strategy to combat impersonation and misinformation – to a pay-for-play subscription feature.
But Twitter already has a subscription offering! He's just ruining the verification system out of ignorance and spite.
Doesn’t matter what the “in the know” understood, it’s what the blue checks perceived it to be. To them it was a hard to get item that only folks with some degree of “celebrity” received.
Boo hoo. Your little blue badge of elitism is now available to the proles, how will you ever cope with such uppityness?
Old blue checkmark: Twitter confirms that this person is who they claim to be. If an account is called DonaldTrump and has a blue checkmark, Twitter confirms it is the account of the former president.
New blue checkmark: Twitter confirms that someone pays 8 dollars every month. If an account is called DonaldTrump and has a blue checkmark, Twitter confirms that someone is paying 8 dollars every month for this account.
So, if you see a tweet from the blue checkmark @DonaldTrump saying "I am running for president", with the new system, you have no idea if the former president has publicly announced he is running again, or if some rando who had 8 dollars to spare wants to make it seem so.
Good! I can’t think of a better way to make Twitter better for the world than to eliminate the elitism.
For what it’s worth, if Twitter eliminated the blue checkmark entirely…the exact same people would be complaining about that too. It’s their special celebrity badge that separates them as “valid” from the little people.
To illustrate with an example, I follow Paul Massaro https://twitter.com/apmassaro3 because of his expertise and because he gave me advice when I needed it the most. He is, to put it mildly, a target for nation state actors,
> Paul Massaro is the senior policy advisor for counter-corruption and sanctions. Paul’s work has advanced the recognition of corruption as a national security threat. He has been described in the media as “one of America’s foremost corruption experts” and an “endless source of democratic ingenuity." His work has been similarly described as "breathtakingly prescient.” He has worked on over 13 pieces of counter-corruption legislation and facilitated the founding of the Congressional Caucus against Foreign Corruption and Kleptocracy and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance against Kleptocracy. Paul also covers German-speaking Europe and East Asia.
> His work on the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, a landmark law redefining doping as fraud and making it illegal in international competitions anywhere in the world, has for the first time provided justice to clean athletes and held to account the authoritarian actors who use sport as a tool of foreign policy. The Associated Press described the unanimous passage of the act as “a remarkable achievement considering the polarization in U.S. politics.” His work on the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention (TRAP) Act was similarly groundbreaking, serving as the first-ever U.S. law to respond to abuse of INTERPOL by authoritarian regimes.
https://www.csce.gov/about-csce/staff/paul-massaro-iii-polic...
He deals with sanctions and he is one of the people deeply involved in the Russian sanctions when they invaded Ukraine, https://www.csce.gov/international-impact/press-and-media/pr...
I am sure there are people who'd prefer that he was discredited, his work hampered, or just to hurt him a bit for the amount of money he's taken out of their coffers.
He is a cog in the machine, but he is one of the more important cogs in the machine. That makes him a target.
He is also an avid social media user and interacts with people on Twitter. A lot. He uses the site prolifically and has 300k+ followers due to his expertise.
If anyone could buy that badge, and millions would have to for Twitter to service the LBO's debt, then it becomes trivially easy for nation state actors to eventually create a fake, or several fake, Paul Massaros, and knowing which one is the real Paul would get harder. ("just check the username" doesn't quite work with the general public)
It would become easier to manufacture a scandal that could be used against him & the US in general.
The kicker is that he's not even remotely the most important person on Twitter. The site has a heavy chunk of the American leadership regularly interacting with people and each other online, and they're all targets that could be used by clever propagandists.
The badge used to help mitigate it. I know if I'm talking to a Paul Massaro with a badge, then it's the real Paul. That becomes impossible without it.
This is a terrible idea.
in the first week.
That's chaos whatever your benchmark.
Is it wise to sail the sea with such a captain at the helm? Sure it's the same old boat, and we're heading to the same old destination, with the same old crew. But something is amiss.
The only “chaos” I’m aware of is the /b/ N**r spam invasion that occurred one afternoon? The rest seems to just be Musk doing Musk and manufactured outrage (as I really do not understand how $8/mo is breaking the bank for popular celebrities and brands) over charging for validation.
Anyway, down with Habbo Hotel.