> The whole screwup stems from the bizarre misconception that the blue checkmark was some mark of prestige, rather than just "this person has a public-facing job and we've verified their identity".

The misconception was coming from inside the building. Ostensibly the blue check was a security feature, but it was also used as a positive signal when ranking content. Blue users could also see a separate notification feed of only other Blue users. And so on.

> it was also used as a positive signal when ranking content

This is (in my opinion) why they slowed down verifications to a crawl, because they realized it shouldn't necessarily lead to boosted importance, and that it certainly wouldn't scale if they opened up identity verification to everyone instead of just "famous people".

So like every other half-baked feature that remained only partially rolled out for years, or features that were briefly available and then were hidden altogether, they just sat on it in fear of making any changes at all.

I think Twitter made that mess themselves. I know of many public figures (many YouTubers) who attempted verification just to be shot down for reasons that aren't related to ID verification. Others would get it no problem.

Yes, but Elon didn't solve that problem. Imo the correct move would have been to open up verification for everyone. Demanding a one time fee for verification (20-50USD?) would make sense, since this creates work. Then add a different checkmark or whatever for Twitter Premium.

> Imo the correct move would have been to open up verification for everyone.

Well, the correct move would be to actual verify people. Just taking their money means nothing.

Sure, that is what I meant. Otherwise it's not verification anymore (and the new Twitter Blue isn't).

Truth, this was a pre-Elon Twitter thing, they should have opened up verfication for everyone. I had no idea if I was debating a bot, a paid anonymous account or a genuine real person. If I was in a park talking to a random person, I could see that they are real. On Twitter, I can't do that. So I end up not even putting the time in, because I don't know if they are real.

Verification for everyone makes no sense to me. I don't care if @JohnSmith is the John Smith from Seattle, or the John Smith from Miami, or the John Smith from anywhere else, especially since there are likely more than one John Smith in each of those cities. The only reason to care is if the figure is in some way notable, which was the point.

It turns out to be important to know which is the official Eli Lilly account, and at some point it was deemed important to know who was a news reporter, rather than someone attempt to trade on the reputation of a newspaper to support their own opinions.

Verifying everyone is definitely missing the point of verification.

They could have added gold checkmarks instead with additional features and whatnot, because the two are not mutually exclusive. But instead they chose to capitalise on the prestige that the blue checkmarks already had, thereby devaluating the whole concept. It’s a really weird choice if you ask me.

The now also have gray checkmarks for government agencies and golden checkmarks... for something

Gold checkmarks are for brands, which Twitter reportedly wants $1000/month for. So basically, they're like Twitter Blue, except not for poor people.

The Cadillac Cimarron of the tech world.

If we are talking about Obama, then sure, let's make it hard for people to impersonate him. But what happens when you get down to some guy with a YouTube channel and 10k subscribers. Does he have a public facing job? What if he only had 100 subscribers?

It becomes an arbitrary status symbol eventually.

In those cases it was about risk of impersonation. Plenty of people who weren't "famous" still had enough of an audience that it was profitable for some crypto-hawking spammer to imitate them and try to con their audience.

That basically happened to me. Modest number of followers but enough for the crypto-grifters to spam.

It it were just like that, then having blue status won’t give boost in recommendations. It does though (hard to say since when though)

The blue checkmark was not just that. Having it completely altered the way one interacted with Twitter. There was a checkbox to hide all posts from people who did not have one. It was an entirely different class of service.

I am pretty sure that will be by default soon with Twitter blue too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/28/elon-musk-says-only-verified...

There was a notification feed tab to filter notifications to “verified only” (which ironically has lost almost all use as spam and low quality accounts make up the majority of blue checks now), but there was never a way to filter your feed to “Verified Only” — though Elon recently tweeted he plans to create such a ‘feature’, and forcefully roll it out to everyone’s “For You” feed so even unverified users will only see verified tweets in that feed.

> this person has a public-facing job

Well there you go, that's a status symbol in our society. A recognizable face or name, at least in their field, is the ultimate strive for many people.

It's not just Twitter the company. It's often the users as well.

I've seen a bunch of people basically bent out of shape because Twitter essentially didn't see them as important enough, based on whatever arbitrary algorithm, to give them a blue check.

I was also turned down in spite of having an impersonation attempt (which I did get banned) and writing publicly on a regular basis. I didn't really care but I understand that some do. I doubt I'd pay a monthly fee so long as the site was generally usable.