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.