To me it seems obvious that this was in response to the BlockTheBlue campaign. A number of high-profile accounts with over a million followers, @dril for example, were telling people to block every blue checkmark. Forcing blue checkmarks back on these high-profile accounts put an end to the BlockTheBlue campaign, because then they can't say "you should block me".

Well, it shifted it from “Block the Blue” to “I’m not actually paying for this shit” from the falsely-labelled “subscribers” (well, except the dead ones, who are pretty quiet about it), with a possible side order of legal action for the Lanham Act violations (and if the Disney Junior UK mistake of gifting false “verified organization” status to a parody account of a real brand isn’t an isolated incident, possibly some additional legal fun…)

Actually, the first part isn’t even true; lots of the “Block the Blue” types given Blue are still doing Block the Blue (and leveraging the “changing your display name when you have Blue suspends your checkmark” policy, too.) But they’ve added “I’m not actually paying for this shit” on top of “block the blue”.

No it did not.

Has it put an end to the campaign, though? People are just changing their display names to get rid of the dreaded white checkmark on blue background.

In their rush to create false endorsers for their various verification routes, they also gave “verified organization” status (which has an official price of $1,000 to apply which isn’t refunded if rejected, and supposedly involves significant vetting) to a fake Disney account: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35687666

Regardless of your opinion on Elon, I don't see the issue. I'd even argue that re-adding the checkmark to dead celebrates is actually respectful, since they are unable to subscribe but they are official accounts who historically were "verified."

> Regardless of your opinion on Elon, I don't see the issue

The issue with the false notations that people are subscribers (whether its dead celebrities, live celebrities, organizations, or whatever—the specific example of the many Twitter has done in this rollout doesn’t matter) is false endorsement, which aside from being deceptive and unethical is a violation of federal law (the Lanham Act.)

There’s additional issues that come from the fact these are, for organizations (gold check), bypassing verification as well as payment, but the false endorsement one is the most general issue. Bypassing verification isn’t aj issue with Blue largely because Blue verification is meaningless.

Except they've made a big deal out of letting everyone know that verification isn't a thing anymore. (EDIT: or actually, by now it is a thing again, but not with a blue checkmark, but a golden one. So this is even more clearly pretending that the account pays for blue, not it being verified!)

Twitter is explicitly communicating that dead celebrities have actively subscribed (paid $8/month) and verified a phone number, which is just inaccurate. At the least, they should have just left the legacy copy, because this is tasteless.

I'm not convinced this is tasteless - dead celebrities may still have people that manage their affairs and accounts, and they could have subscribed. I know that doesn't cover all cases, but I think the journalism of this article is at least poor and doesn't consider all cases.

It feels ghoulish because it doesnt read as something done for their memory but something done using their memory.

This makes sense in isolation, but the way that Elon has approached managing Twitter has turned the verified status into a symbol of allegiance with one side or another. So now being verified doesn't just communicate something about your account, but about your political ideology and whether you agree with Elon's decisions or not. It's this aspect that's a bit of an ethical hot potato here.

I'm not confident about the entire statement you're making. Paying $8 does not equate to agreeing with Elon or what side of politics you sit, paying $8 only equates to whether or not you want a blue "verified" checkmark.

I really hate this culture of "cancel person X" and if you use anything "person X" has made, your a racist/bigot/whatever.

This whole blue check politic statement you are making is a strawman.

Like it or not, Musk has worked hard at tying Twitter to his personal brand since he took over. Consider that Twitter has no PR department outside of Elon himself. It's not as closely tied as something like Tesla, but still if you don't like Elon or his politics you're less likely to pay for verification. This means that the checkmark now has an associated political/social connotation. No it's not 100%, but it's there.

Edit: This applies in reverse as well. There are definitely fans/admirers of Elon who subscribed immediately as a show of support. But I admit all of this is anecdata, I don't have numbers on how widespread it is.

The checkmark means "paid $8", not "verified".

It means “verified” but only to the extent of “verified a phone number”, per the info provided when clicking on Blue checkmark account.

Of course, in addition to being meaningless, that’s also false in the case of the involuntary Blue accounts. But the absence of verification is a bigger deal with the involuntary gold checks.

Is that a "real" problem, though? Like does that blue checkmark actually change how you use twitter? Have all the historic "verified" accounts become invalidated and fake based on the blue checkmark being tied to the account?

Just move platforms.

I do not understand all of the debates, don't like it? Don’t use it. Simple.

Elon-hate is a tribal affinity signal at this point. I'm not sure that they dislike Twitter as much as they like decrying these policies.

I do not understand all of the meta-debates, don't like the debates? Don't participate in them. Simple.

What a terrible idea for monetization.

The entire point of the blue checkmark was "this account with a high-profile person's/company's name is actually who they say they are".

Turning it into "everyone gets a checkmark that wants one" has destroyed the value of the checkmark. It is, at best, a suckers badge at this point.

My understanding is Elon never cared about the institution of a blue check mark and is taking them for a nice infusion of cash with the intention of phasing it out.

If he's that desperate for money why would he phase it out?

This over-exploitation is a clear fulcrum for the failure of the platform and could undermine a future payday.

This is enshittification - pillage the brand for short-term gain, long-term loss, thinking that something is worth more dead than alive. Either Musk is trying to pillage the bluecheck system (he thinks its' worthless and wants to extract some value before he kills it), or Twitter itself (get some short-term revenue from blue-check-chuds so he can make the site look slightly more profitable so he can sell it off).

But at $8/mo? Celebrities and influencers can afford way more than that.

$8/mo is the price range that attracts scammers and hustlers that care about showing up in the first 5 replies of a major tweet so they can spam their product to a large audience.

>$8/mo is the price range that attracts scammers and hustlers

Don't forget about the trolls!

The point is you can't do this with any kind of scale needed to swamp users, which is a real fear with autogenerated text nowadays.

I think Musk never quite understood how other people see the blue tick. In his own experience on Twitter, he probably noticed that verified users were made more visible in his replies, feed, etc., and he seems to think that that is the primary benefit.

I think he's underestimating the damage he's doing to the site. Every respectable person is looking for the exit, it's just that the Twitter moat is very high. But it's not limitless. If any twitter alternative like Mastodon or Notes or BlueSky or whatever gets real traction, Twitter is going the way of Digg.

But the trick is that the badge also gives you preferential positioning in replies and search, so that for dedicated hobbyist trolls, it allows their comments to bubble to the top. And the worst reply-guys on twitter love this.

As a result, viewing the replies of any moderately progressive tweeter yields a heap of blue-check abuse as the first glance.

So basically, the twitter stereotype of "Hello my name is firstname bunchanumbes and I have some really shitty opinions" is now bluecheck-boosted.

The "preferential positioning" seems to be just a belief at this point. Anecdotally I've seen far more people saying they've seen no difference in Tweet engagement since subscribing.

But I agree with you -- it's the belief they'll get preferential positioning that crypto grifters, SEO lunatics, and marketing slimeballs are banking on.

Personas of people who would buy Blue at this point fall into a few buckets:

• The aforementioned group of users hoping for preferential positioning

• People who simply want to show support for Elon/Twitter by paying

• People who are desperate for a blue check, to feel important

• People who find value in the features of Twitter Blue (which, if we're honest, are meager)

Lots of overlap in these -- e.g., I think people who are desperate for a blue check are claiming to be subscribed because of the Twitter Blue features -- a modern take on "I read Playboy for the articles."

This happened today: “Verified accounts are now prioritized” - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1650731557164818437?s=20

It has been kind of crazy to see people be mad that their “for you” feed was filled with promoted “blue checks” when no such change had been done yet.

It was very obviously happening in replies, which is different from "For You". The reply system had a different sorting algorithm that AFAIK prioritized verified accounts even before Elon came along. It was very visible now that the "pay for verify" system was available where you'd have a viral tweet with a solid wall of verified replies for pages before you'd see the far-more-popular unverified replies. The quality hit was bad enough I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter is quietly turning down the weighting of Verified in replies, because it's so extreme.

The verge is the new BuzzFeed. Mark my words.

There's something about murdered-by-saudis Kashoggi getting a forced blue mark on owned-by-saudis Twitter just so Musk can jerk himself off, but I can't quite place my finger on how utterly fucked it is.

Absolute amateur hour. Like two sets of internet messageboard warriors trying to get one over the other. Only in this case, one of these warriors is the CEO!

It's more fun when you know the other guy is invested in winning the argument to the tune of $44 billion...

How is this any different from Disney resurrecting the corpse of Stan Lee to advertise Marvel movies he never had any part in years after his death?

Who cares if people get their blue checks restored?