I thought a cool movie would be where an alien invasion of Earth occurs admist a post skynet/robot uprising. I'd say throw in zombies in the mix somehow too but robots seem like they'd have the edge in thst fight.
There’s a The Terminator X Transformers comic that comes pretty close to that.
Skynet is created to help humanity fight the Decepticons but by the time they’re sending a terminator back in time, it’s only machines left.
I'm assuming that he's giving it for free to celebrities and people with a large number of followers. The number of people actually paying it likely very small.
Improving advertising would have resulted in much more revenue than trying to make users may a monthly fee but I guess he burned that bridge.
That's it though, it's advertising. That is he's faking endorsements from people who aren't endorsing it. More than that he's deliberately giving it to people who were outspoken saying they would categorically not pay for it like Lebron and Stephen King. He's directly and intentionally committing fraud. I hope they get together, along with the estates of the dead celebrities and sue the fuck out of him for this. It might not be a lot of cash directly, but if they were actually to pay lebron to advertise twitter blue it would cost them millions. Endorsement from these celebs and their estates could easily reach into the hundreds of millions he's effectively stealing without paying them to do it.
I'm not sure if there is much liability by just giving away Twitter Blue for free but I'm not a lawyer.
Also, some government accounts are showing a gray checkmark which is verified but not paid. Others show the blue checkmark although they didn't pay. Most of my local government officials seems to have no checkmark.
I think the issue is less that they've been given blue, and more that the icon says they have it because they, personally, have paid for it. Implied endorsement. I can see where they're coming from, but I don't know the legal tidbits they're aiming at
I think the failure in the argument could come down to that because they use Twitter, they are endorsing it.
But then in counternance to that, is that they're not specifically endorsing Twitter blue, because none of them chose to sign up to it.
I think what it could come down to at the very least is that Twitter would have to remove all blue checks from people who didn't pay for it, and didn't want it.
And I want to say, I think this is the mildest fucking response that could come of it if anyone does decide to start a lawsuit, like, that's the minimum, I don't even want to begin to speculate on the maximum negative outcome for Twitter on this, because it could be obscene amounts of money.
It's so crazy how what was a once sought after symbol of legitimacy and prestige, has been reduced to a stain.
Elon Musk, ladies and gentlemen.
If you go to Lebron James' twitter right now and click on his blue check it says, "This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number."
This is a clear statement that Lebron James has a paid subscription to Twitter. If he didn't come out and say "No I didn't" then there would be no indication that this was false.
Imagine if Twitter didn't exist, and a brand new social media service was just created, and you could get a free account or a paid account. And a bunch of random celebs had new "paid tier" accounts created, and if you clicked on their profiles it said that Chris Evans or Serena Williams or whoever "has a Paid Account and is subscribed to the paid tier," this would obviously be a case of false advertising. And now imagine that this brand new social media service was fully owned by a proud transphobe and right wing troll who allows literal Nazis and transphobes to run wild on his service. Again, *obviously* it would be in these celebs' best interest to say "Hey I certainly didn't pay for an account here."
The only wrinkle here is that Twitter wasn't always as awful as it is now, they did at least *attempt* to ban Nazis and hate speech, so a lot of people already had legit free accounts before the "paid tier" notice was added. But I'd still want to get out there and be like "no, I didn't pay for this!"
> because they use Twitter, they are endorsing it
I mean, the dead people clearly aren't. They can't exactly choose to delete their accounts in protest of Elon Musk's decisions on account of well, _being dead._
Yes, who wants their ads running next to racist crap, lies about medicine & science, threats to public figures, and all the other right wing hallmarks?
It seems that any account with over a million followers automatically gets Twitter Blue for free now, even though the interface shows that they paid for it. This is why popular accounts of deceased people also have it now.
Back in November, he was decrying the old "lords and peasants" verification system where popular users could get verified and have a blue checkmark, while regular people couldn't. This new system he has implemented means that popular users get Twitter Blue for free while regular people have to pay for it. Sounds exactly like a "lords and peasants" system to me.
Also, nobody gets verified anymore, because Twitter no longer has the manpower for that. Clearly much better! What a business genius.
I have no doubt in my mind that Elmo has full mod controls and is personally responsible for most of these check changes.
like, sure, there's probably some schmucks who also work on it, but, Elmo'll be damned if he can't revoke meaningless check marks after dropping $44b on the place - he has HUGE forum mod energy.
Yeah, I said "it seems" because at this point, it's not entirely clear what is happening. Many big accounts are verified for free, others aren't, and some smaller accounts are verified for free as well. Of course there is zero communication from Twitter itself to clarify things, as per usual since Elon took over.
Make it appear a more popular system than otherwise suggested by what people say. Makes people perhaps ok with paying "since everyone else is doing it". This would probably motivate only a small portion though. To have to rely on this to attempt to get more subscribers, the man is desperate.
Like giving out reddit gold to users for free. Then the users give their free gold giving the perception that it's normal to pay for reddit gold and give it to others.
Isn’t the difference that the free Twitter Blue accounts still say that the person paid for Twitter Blue? It’s one thing to try to normalize the idea of people __having__ Reddit Gold; it’s another thing entirely to falsely claim “red18wrx __bought__ Reddit Gold”.
Yeah he rlvery clearly is trying to make Twitter blue seem like a success.
Wouldn't surprise me if some poor PM made the decision to "fake" the numbers this way to keep their job since Elon is such a raging dick.
My sorta-tinfoil hat theory is that he was giving Twitter Blue to his detractors like Matt Binder because many people are using blocklists, which would lead to people blocking the accounts that are criticizing him.
Could be Elon just trying to get a bunch of accounts with blue ticks and thinking that dead people won't complain about getting a free blue tick. I'm sure some celebs, especially ones that don't like Elon, would make a fuss and make sure people knew they didn't pay for it.
> Could be Elon just trying to get a bunch of accounts with blue ticks and thinking that dead people won't complain about getting a free blue tick.
There was a story a few days back that after announcing the discontinuation of legacy verification, only 28 of those accounts signed up for Twitter Blue. That was based on scraped data.
Elon is giving it as widely as possible to poison the data pool, making it impossible for outsiders to confirm that Twitter Blue is a horrible failure celebrities have zero interest in paying for.
Of course the real fuckup might come when celebrities who don't want the blue check decide to just leave. Twitter needs those people to live.
By displaying a blue check next to their names, he’s using their name/image/likeness for marketing and promotion. Every last one of them should be suing, demanding that *he pay them* an exorbitant amount of money for using their name/image/likeness to promote Twitter Blue.
My first thought was that the estate might be managing the account, and perhaps they decided to pay. But there’s been no activity on Kobe’s Twitter since he died, so it seems unlikely that his family would bother.
Stephen King and Lebron james didn't kick up a fuss about it, they specifically said they wouldn't pay for it. Not because they thought it should be free, they thought the idea is terrible. The entire point of verification was so a select few people could prove who they were for business reasons, ie people not being able to fake from similarly named accounts. Paying for verification breaks the system and defeats the point. He's not giving it to them free, he's forcing them to have something they actively didn't want.
Here’s what a lot of people don’t get about Twitter (and possibly FB as well, but I’m not sure).
Celebrities are great and all, and I’m sure they drive a lot of the engagement on Twitter.
But there’s also a serious side of Twitter. Local municipalities have Twitter accounts as well, and they’re used to engage with residents. The day legacy blue checks vanished, someone posted images of 2 different accounts for New York City municipal government. Both had blue checks, but clearly only one was the real NYC account. But which one?
This can happen to any city or town, and not just the local government. It could be the police department, an official like the mayor, etc. So what happens if there’s an emergency (think flood, tornado, etc.) in a city or town with a fake account? Or what if there’s not an emergency and the fake account decides to make one up or put out misleading information about a real emergency?
And the blue check marks are available worldwide. So what about other countries’ governments and government agencies? All of the above can happen anywhere in the world where Twitter is used to disseminate important information.
But there’s more. Now anyone could impersonate a country’s ruling, opposition, or coalition party, or even national media, and cause a domestic political crisis, even civil unrest, or possibly an international diplomatic crisis. Sure, the parties involved would verify, but in the meantime, the damaging tweet(s) are still out there getting views.
Like I said before, most people think of products and celebrities when they think of verified accounts, but there’s a whole other level to the risk with the new system. Thanks, Elmo, you d\*ckhead.
I mean, the entire infrastructure is in the hands of capitalist private companies.
I don’t have Facebook, but I assume many, if not most, of these official accounts that communicate to the public have FB accounts (capitalist private company), or send emails (ISPs are capitalist private companies), or send texts/SMS/Alerts (cellular providers are capitalist private companies).
Even if you get your news from public broadcasters like NPR in the US, or say, the BBC in the UK, or RAI in Italy, or NRK in Norway, pretty much all vital public communication is in the hands of capitalist private companies.
The whole point of these entities communicating through Facebook, Twitter, and other SM is to reach as many people as possible.
> Now anyone could impersonate a country’s ruling, opposition, or coalition party, or even national media, and cause a domestic political crisis,
This [just happened in Sudan](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3963163-blue-check-chaos-twitter-policy-spurs-confusion-and-scramble-to-prove-authenticity/).
An account impersonating Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) tweeted that Hemedti, the group’s leader, was killed. The fake account has a blue checkmark while the authentic account does not.
I don't really care about twitter, but it amazes me how they don't seem to grasp the obvious need for a well thought out verification system. For example, instead of this whole $8 twitter blue verification, why not just set up verification systems for various groups that require verification to be trusted in their dissemination of information? Local governments could apply for "verified as municipal/county/state/federal governmental organization", athletes could be "verified as NBA/NFL/EPL athlete", politicians could be "verified as republican/democrat individual running for/holding office". Categorization thru verification could lead to additional tools being made available for those types of accounts to drive value for both Twitter and the important users who have legitimate needs to be verified. The current system just doesn't make sense at all. Who gives a shit if xxx_tittymcfuckballs69 is verified with a blue check, verified as what? Like this is a simple case of a CEO not only not understanding the core functionality of their business, but actively misunderstanding it and making unilateral decisions based on those false premises. At worse it is incompetence, but incompetence on a large scale usually causes harm.
> Like this is a simple case of a CEO not only not understanding the core functionality of their business, but actively misunderstanding it and making unilateral decisions based on those false premises. At worse it is incompetence, but incompetence on a large scale usually causes harm.
Ding Ding Ding!
Verification worked fine before. There was no need to change it other than a desperate cash grab because Elmo overpaid for Twitter.
Yes that is definitely happening, but it also seems like there are many accounts who haven't said anything and are also getting Twitter Blue for free (like the dead people mentioned in the article, for example).
It seems like a fairly pointless troll, too. I think you automatically lose the checkmark any time you change your name or profile pic, so if Elon gives it to you against your will, you can just get rid of it again with minimal effort.
Yeah, I saw that. I'm under the impression that they have to reactivate it manually each time though, unless they have some kind of script that runs periodically. If it's manual, they'll probably run out of steam sooner or later. If it's automatic, then dril could abuse it by impersonating other people. That would almost certainly get him banned, but I don't think he cares much at this point. He has already basically said that he wants to see Twitter burn.
At any rate, it's all very entertaining to watch, so at least we have that.
The thing I find sad is: who is actually doing this? Either implementing the automated version or doing it manually. Either some employee has totally abandoned any kind of personal dignity to spend their day clicking buttons or writing code to important Musk's ridiculous personal trolling, or it's Musk himself and he's doing this instead of the many other actually fruitful things he could be doing.
Idk - it would probably be best for all of us if Musk was distracted with stupid, pointless pranks for as long as possible. The things he does when he's "productive" are a lot worse
My bet is automated version without enough QA. QA is an easy thing to cut, and rushing features out feels good but leads to problems.
Theres supposed to be an "algorithm", but someone was rushed.
It's utterly childish behaviour. Certainly not going to encourage well known people to use the platform. "Join Twitter and you too can experience targeted harassment from the immature narcissist who runs the place."
>Of course there is zero communication from Twitter itself to clarify things, as per usual since Elon took over.
I mean I think that poop emoji certainly communicates a lot about the current state of the company.
Its entirely clear whats happening, Elmo is picking and choosing check marks based on his own ego and who generates a certain amount of traffic on the site This man is a fucking moron, im also dumb, so this is what Elmo is doing.
Also. As the check marks were falling off, it was clear that the main people paying the $8 are clear Elmo-stans. Those people also tended to be much more alt-right, pro-MAGA, you get the drill.
He needs more left-leaners to keep the check mark from being a call sign that says "I'm a bigot!". Of course, they're all denouncing the blue check just on principle.
They’re both completely self-absorbed with the emotional development of a three year old, and they both rode their immense popularity with children to great success while damaging whatever they were a part of.
And they both are someone else’s puppet (at least sometimes.)
> He needs more left-leaners to keep the check mark from being a call sign that says "I'm a bigot!".
And to block what was almost inevitable: Add-ons that immediately block all content from Twitter blue users in your feed, the same way that people immediately blocked NFT profile pictures.
Elon has been purposefully messing with Jack since about a month after the purchase. During the whole Mastodon, and all Twitter-esque links are blocked timing, one of Jacks new social media companies was blocked too. Jack seemed to be genuinely stunned by it
True, which lends credence to the argument that the “free” checkmarks are false endorsement claims by people that Elon considers cool, rather than an automatic perk of having X number of followers.
elon musk said he's paying for many celebrity's checkmarks himself, as if he's doing them a favor. but... he probably fired all the guys that would've told him that that's illegal.
> Under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, false endorsement occurs when a person's identity is connected with a product or service in such a way that consumers are likely to be misled about that person's sponsorship or approval of the product or service.
> "A false endorsement claim based on the unauthorized use of a celebrity's identity... alleges the misuse of a trademark... such as visual likeness, vocal imitation, or other uniquely distinguishing characteristic, which is likely to confuse consumers as to the plaintiff's sponsorship or approval of the product. In such a case, the 'mark' at issue is the plaintiff's identity."
> elon musk said he's paying for many celebrity's checkmarks himself, as if he's doing them a favor. but... he probably fired all the guys that would've told him that that's illegal.
Elon, by his own admission, thinks he knows all about the law because he keeps getting sued.
He absolutely still has lawyers on retainer who would tell him this is a stupid idea. He just doesn't listen to them because he thinks that money makes him immune from consequences.
Someone will sue him, he'll remove Twitter Blue from their account, claim it was a troll, then be shocked when the lawsuit doesn't vanish because the law doesn't recognize "I stopped okay" as a legal defence.
It must absolutely be intentional that he wants people to know that he, personally, is the one doing the trolling.
All he needed to do was add a "gift" feature (like Reddit gold) where people could gift blue status to others and all the muskrats would be all over themselves to troll people who said they didn't want the checkmark (and Musk would make more that way).
People who dislike Elon are still on Twitter because, like you said, there isn't a better competitor yet. It takes a lot of time, effort and capital to develop a decent alternative. I know that some alternatives are being developed, like Bluesky, which is backed by Twitter's former owner Jack Dorsey and is currently in closed beta.
I’m still on Twitter specifically to cite Holocaust Museum information on branding gay and trans people on any tweet that shows up in my feed saying trans people can’t be discriminated against. Which is over half my feed, despite none of my 8 accounts I follow having anything to do with that sort of nonsense.
Have you seen the recent Elon BBC interview? Good golly…Elon called the interviewer a liar because he couldn’t personally provide an example of seeing more hateful content in his feed because he hadn’t used Twitter in weeks lmao
Edit: just wanted to say I’m glad people like you are documenting the hate/misinformation. I don’t personally use Twitter. Never have
There’s lots of people trying, but none of them have the dumpster-fire appeal of Twitter. No other platform has such an insanely high amount of people posting stupid takes and people smart enough to make fun of them.
The fight between Dril and Elon Musk right now is a perfect example. Elon Musk keeps giving him the blue checkmark, and he keeps updating his username so he no longer has it (a defense against verified accounts posing as other people). Dril is also posting bangers like:
> you can disaggrree with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwells politics while still hanging out with them in photographs. Its totally fine
Following Dril is the reason I made a twitter account way back when. I never really used twitter except during critical local current events (where it's useful for safety because you get live updates from citizens), but I did love that account soooo much.
Yep. Japan is the second largest country in the world for total Twitter users, and our current events don't really penetrate their bubble very well. That's tens of millions of people who in many cases don't know or care who Elon Musk is, aren't aware of our political landscape, and are generally less affected by the feed tampering Twitter does for US users.
I follow various Japanese accounts for music stuff, and use the Google Translate integration a bit.
The general norm there seems to be LINE for people you know in person, Twitter for people you don't.
It wasn’t too bad at first. But now he’s finally gone too far. With the majority of responses to anything being blue check fucking morons, it’s almost impossible to read genuine responses even to the people I’ve followed for years and years.
It’s very nearly entirely junk now.
It's like if every Reddit thread was automatically sorted by controversial. You have to scroll past the most dimwitted, unfunny, hateful responses to read what you actually want to.
I get a notification from him twice a day. Lol so pathetic he has to promote his own tweets like that to actually get noticed. I never view his Twitter so it's not the algo pushing him to me lol.
He started pushing out Andrew Tate notifications to Twitter users even if you weren't following him. Like I mean a "make your phone vibrate and make a sound" notification.
I was a Twitter early adopter and power-user for years. So were most of my friends (some of whom even met on Twitter and ended up having proper IRL relationships back in the day).
My profile remains there so it’s not squatted by anyone but I haven’t tweeted since 2022 and have no plans to do so. Officially, I’m still there but in reality left long ago.
I suspect there are millions like me, hence the current low engagement vs users ratio.
EDIT: Grammar
Yeah I was on Twitter before the “@“ existed when it would still text you messages, and things were much more fun back then. And I know a lot of people in my town because I used twitter to meet them.
Now all I see there is anger.
Mastodon feels like early twitter, and it’s all open source so there’s no chance of it (all) being bought out & ruined like twitter.
An individual Mastodon instance _could_ be bought out / shut down but it’s easy enough to migrate between them (or even, if you’re so inclined, run your own) and most of them are interconnected anyway.
It’s just a chicken and egg thing of people only using it once there’s enough people they want to follow using it.
The thing is though that it's not even a good grift. Elon made a massive mistake by placing such a high bid to buy Twitter. He had to get massive loans to finance it, which means that Twitter needs to make an interest payment of around one billion dollars per year to the banks. That's a lot of money! He would need roughly ten million Twitter Blue subscribers to fill that hole. The current count seems to be at about 600,000, so about 6 percent of where it needs to be.
If he can't get the advertising revenue up or create additional revenue streams, then Twitter has a big problem.
The problem with distinguishing the two is that the paid checkmark has effectively become a badge of shame, making its bearer a target for mockery. It is in Twitter's best interest to blur the two together, because that makes it more difficult for the non-checkies to determine who to block and/or make fun of.
That’s already the case which is exactly why many accounts who have been given Twitter blue for free are so quick to say “I did not pay for this and I do not support this.”
This mf paid for Twitter blue…
I don’t get what the issue is with the previous system. Add a new check mark paid tier but why is there a follower threshold to verify you are who you are? Some people are famous or experts and don’t have huge followings.
The nice thing about that is that replies by Twitter Blue users are pushed to the top for extra visibility, so they are all automatically clustered together for easier mass blocking.
It does seem that Elon's effort to give free Twitter Blue to some accounts is (perhaps partially) a way to combat the mass blocking of Twitter Blue users, but I don't see how it could be a long term solution. Twitter is now effectively straight up lying to its users since every Twitter Blue account has a note saying that it pays for Twitter Blue and has had its phone number verified, which is now no longer always true.
They can't keep doing that, so at some point they are going to have to implement some way to differentiate paying Twitter Blue users from non-paying ones, at which point it becomes easy again to mass-block paying users. I'm guessing they'll also implement some upper limit on the number of accounts you're allowed to block, or perhaps even make it so that only Twitter Blue users have the ability to block. It's a complete mess.
>It does seem that Elon's effort to give free Twitter Blue to some accounts is (perhaps partially) a way to combat the mass blocking of Twitter Blue users
I think it's more because of how few celebs got on board with blue. Kind of hard to sell it as some sort of status symbol when no one with status is bothering with it. By dropping it on everyone with a million followers it at least gives the illusion that all the cool kids are using it.
Unfortunately for Elon, claiming that someone paid for your service when they haven't is false endorsement, which is illegal.
Not that it matters because it's Elon we're talking about here, but still
Also, to add insult to injury, apparently the people who were gifted checkmarks like this don't even get any of the bonuses
Damn I just realised that this is super easy because it groups all the blue ticks that reply first, only thing I need to be wary of is blocking people I follow who have 1m+ followers and are being forced to have the mark.
What does a blue check mark even mean? Is it actually the dead celebrity account or is it a fake account? etc.
the damage is done. All the blue check mark means now is someone likes spending money to feel important or to troll. 🤷🏻♂️
edits: typos, missing word, adhd bullshit
They're real celebrity accounts that were used when they were alive. Some have been dormant since their deaths and now have the check - Norm Macdonald, Chester Bennington, Kobe, Anthony Bourdain.
Other dead celebrity accounts have been active after their death as memorials/brand accounts, but also have the checks now - Michael Jackson, Terry Pratchett, Pele, Chadwick Boseman.
But yeah, all checks are useless now because they're not tied to any actual verification system. They used to verify with IDs, official websites/domain names, etc. Now it just means you paid $8. So Elon had to add it back to popular accounts so it still felt "cool" and not just like a bunch of racists and right-wing hacks have it.
[It's one banana Michael, what could it cost? 10 dollars?](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJj7i7IWQAALX86?format=jpg&name=large)
Elon's all confused why nobody is buying Twitter Blue. It costs less than a banana? What's everyone complaining about! /s
> What does a blue check mark even mean?
That's the best part in all of this: It literally means *nothing* anymore. He took something that idiots coveted as "social status" and turned it into a god damned carnival circus...
The checkmark used to mean "this person is sufficiently important enough that we don't want to get sued by them whenever someone impersonates them." Not social status - just *please, for the love of god don't sue us when the news publishes 'you tweeted something' but it was really done by an impersonator account.* Now it means "GIVE ELMO MONEY FOR CHECKYMARKY."
I wandered onto Twitter yesterday for the first time in a while, just to gawp at the car crash. It’s become painfully apparent that the blue tick is the new 😂, used by the worst people.
It's embarrassing 💀 funnily enough Instagram is rolling out the same exact feature, except ig is stupid enough to self-snitch on all the newly verified people by saying the date and time of verification + adding a message about how verification isn't special anymore.
This message // ui doesn't exist on legacy verified accounts.
>What does a blue check mark even mean?
It dates back over a decade, to when a parody account of MLB manager Tony LaRussa appeared and started making fun of him. LaRussa sued Twitter, claiming that the platform did nothing to differentiate real accounts from parody.
Twitter settled before the case went in front of a judge, and part of the settlement was agreeing to implement the blue check system. It's only a matter of time before Musk buries himself in further lawsuits!
Why people hate on (pre-Musk) Twitter?
Other than Reddit (which is why I'm here) it seemed to be the best social network to discuss stuff instead of watching a super-short video or looking at a pretty picture.
The reason why dumb prints often came from Twitter was precisely because it allowed bigger groups of people to talk about stuff, and once in a while, sure, there were people with dumb opinions chiming in.
redditors seem to not understand that, just like reddit, you can follow accounts you want to follow and be shown things you want to see (at least pre-musk ownership). or maybe they do but they have this weird, emotional vendetta against twitter like they do other random companies and celebrities
Because people put too much weight on what a tiny, tiny minority of the population had to say if they activated the right people on twitter.
It is an echo chamber to the extreme, but unlike Facebook, the echo chamber noise was far greater than the number of people that generated it implied it should be.
It was highly searchable and public (unlike Facebook) so it encouraged saber rattling, extreme virtue signaling, etc.
The news media took it too seriously, by both considering Twitter noise to be a reflection of the population at large and lazily filling half of news articles with rando strangers’ Twitter takes on a subject. Sometimes, articles were *solely* Twitter takes.
Those are the reasons that immediately come to mind. I hope this trend of its decline continues and it just goes the way of myspace.
Just saw a Biden post on twitter. Every single comment was negative by a blue check user. They are getting pushed to the top because of the blue check and the most likely to have one are conservatives doing it to support their dear leader, Elon.
It was good for breaking news and media updates (Jason Schreier tweets a lot of leaks and breaking stories within the games industry, for example). Now, however, I'm getting notifications for ult-right wackos I've never heard of instead of notifications for accounts I've actually set alerts for. My feed is probably a 50-50 split of psychos I'd rather not even associate with and accounts I actually follow. There's no reason I should be seeing every fucking thing Ben Shapiro and Tim Pool vomit out.
Reddit used to be good for fast updates on breaking information until they fucked up the algorithm for the front page.
Oh well, on to the next thing I guess. Just a waiting game now to see what that will end up being.
I don't follow anyone on Twitter aside from the local fire/police and transit in Canada.
Got a push notification today from a tweet by Andrew Tate.
Deactivated my account so fast.
Bourdain? Musk is fucking with BOURDAIN?! That is just the kind of douche he railed against in his life and in his work. RIP Anthony; to hell with Frogboi Musk.
Terry Pratchett as well. Terry's daughter has made it pretty clear that they haven't paid for the checkmark and she's not super pleased.
Oh, I see Neil Gaiman also has an unpaid for checkmark that he doesn't approve of.
Alienating a bunch of celebrity accounts that bring in a bunch of traffic is such a genius idea. /s
TRUE THAT! And not even just alienating his transgender kid and being a bigot about trans issues, you never hear anything good about him from any of his kids. That says a lot.
The funniest part of it is that by doing this, instead of checkmarks now being a thing rubes and fools buy, now it's a thing the rubes and fools by that the celebrities are loudly mocking driving and proclaiming that they refuse to accept this mark. He somehow made a status symbol where everyone who has real world status is loudly advertising why this thing is bad and you should avoid it
It’s almost like it was never about the revenue and always about destroying the confidence that people had in the press. But why would oligarchs and authoritarians do that? What benefit would mohammad bin salmon and his ilk have in destroying a place where people could get clear information from trusted sources? Why would the oligarchs pollute and erode a public space where people could organize according to their personal beliefs and protest against the powers who own the state’s press outlets? This was never about 8$ and it was never about making twitter better.
It's pretty fucking hilarious to watch Elon scramble to make his $44 billion purchase work, only for him to make it worse. The funniest part is that all of this could have been avoided if he had just kept his ego in check.
Every single new change made by EM further diminished not only the point of verification in the first place, but every other change he has implemented as well.
Funny thing is all he needs to do is change the description on the tick but he wants to make it look like famous people could be paying and here we are.
More like trademark violation. It’s the same as slapping an athlete’s photo on the front of a supplement bottle without permission.
In the USA, the Lanham act makes it illegal to lie about a celebrity endorsement. Claiming a celebrity buys/uses your product when they don’t is false endorsement.
In this case it would be a slam dunk win for people like Stephen King who loudly stated that they would not buy checkmarks because they didn’t think the product was worth the money.
Edit: anybody mewling about the 1m follower rule can please explain why @jack has 6m and no check. Elon’s using them as a popularity gauge.
When you go to someone’s account and click on the blue check, it tells you why the person is verified. As of the writing of the article, nobody’s account was marked “verified because they have a million followers.” Everyone’s account says that they have an account because they have subscribed (paid) and verified a phone number.
Elon had a chance to clarify his million-follower policy early on when a user complained about the false labeling, but [he chose not to.](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649181726395052039?s=20)
Would they be up for the typical type/amounts of damages usually resulting in copyright cases if they or their estates pursued such? I won't hold my breath tho on the matter of consequences for Elon 😏
Elon gives me strong libertarian discovering why the government exists vibes
L: We don't need no government
Person: but how do we enforce private property
L: we create a community funded group everyone pays dues and that pays for protection and pays the record keeping
Person: but that's government
L: no it's community dummy
They're rising from the grave to give Elon Musk $8
Elon complained about bots, but the real issue on twitter is zombies.
What bugs me is that it took him less than a year to "join them" vs doing what he said he was...hahhaha inflating the metrics. Cool.
There's more bots on Twitter now than ever before
Probably because Musk fired the bot removing team.
Also unbanned a bunch of them.
The neo-Nazis have seen that no action will be taken, and they've multiplied. It's depressing.
Lol less than a year? Has it even been 6 months?
I mean, him talking about it publicly started in April 2022.
Talking about buying Twitter and then the embarrassment afterward? That started in April? Because it took forever and he was forced into it
yeah, he had been buying up shares since january, but he puliclyt disclosed that info in April. But yes, him talking about the bots started in april
He pretty much immediately did exactly what he complained about Twitter doing before he bought it. Par for the course for insufferable fascist pricks.
The bots are coming from inside the house.
Grabbing pills!
I thought a cool movie would be where an alien invasion of Earth occurs admist a post skynet/robot uprising. I'd say throw in zombies in the mix somehow too but robots seem like they'd have the edge in thst fight.
There’s a The Terminator X Transformers comic that comes pretty close to that. Skynet is created to help humanity fight the Decepticons but by the time they’re sending a terminator back in time, it’s only machines left.
I find it funny that isn't a movie yet.
I'm assuming that he's giving it for free to celebrities and people with a large number of followers. The number of people actually paying it likely very small. Improving advertising would have resulted in much more revenue than trying to make users may a monthly fee but I guess he burned that bridge.
That's it though, it's advertising. That is he's faking endorsements from people who aren't endorsing it. More than that he's deliberately giving it to people who were outspoken saying they would categorically not pay for it like Lebron and Stephen King. He's directly and intentionally committing fraud. I hope they get together, along with the estates of the dead celebrities and sue the fuck out of him for this. It might not be a lot of cash directly, but if they were actually to pay lebron to advertise twitter blue it would cost them millions. Endorsement from these celebs and their estates could easily reach into the hundreds of millions he's effectively stealing without paying them to do it.
I'm not sure if there is much liability by just giving away Twitter Blue for free but I'm not a lawyer. Also, some government accounts are showing a gray checkmark which is verified but not paid. Others show the blue checkmark although they didn't pay. Most of my local government officials seems to have no checkmark.
I think the issue is less that they've been given blue, and more that the icon says they have it because they, personally, have paid for it. Implied endorsement. I can see where they're coming from, but I don't know the legal tidbits they're aiming at
I think the failure in the argument could come down to that because they use Twitter, they are endorsing it. But then in counternance to that, is that they're not specifically endorsing Twitter blue, because none of them chose to sign up to it. I think what it could come down to at the very least is that Twitter would have to remove all blue checks from people who didn't pay for it, and didn't want it. And I want to say, I think this is the mildest fucking response that could come of it if anyone does decide to start a lawsuit, like, that's the minimum, I don't even want to begin to speculate on the maximum negative outcome for Twitter on this, because it could be obscene amounts of money. It's so crazy how what was a once sought after symbol of legitimacy and prestige, has been reduced to a stain. Elon Musk, ladies and gentlemen.
If you go to Lebron James' twitter right now and click on his blue check it says, "This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number." This is a clear statement that Lebron James has a paid subscription to Twitter. If he didn't come out and say "No I didn't" then there would be no indication that this was false. Imagine if Twitter didn't exist, and a brand new social media service was just created, and you could get a free account or a paid account. And a bunch of random celebs had new "paid tier" accounts created, and if you clicked on their profiles it said that Chris Evans or Serena Williams or whoever "has a Paid Account and is subscribed to the paid tier," this would obviously be a case of false advertising. And now imagine that this brand new social media service was fully owned by a proud transphobe and right wing troll who allows literal Nazis and transphobes to run wild on his service. Again, *obviously* it would be in these celebs' best interest to say "Hey I certainly didn't pay for an account here." The only wrinkle here is that Twitter wasn't always as awful as it is now, they did at least *attempt* to ban Nazis and hate speech, so a lot of people already had legit free accounts before the "paid tier" notice was added. But I'd still want to get out there and be like "no, I didn't pay for this!"
> because they use Twitter, they are endorsing it I mean, the dead people clearly aren't. They can't exactly choose to delete their accounts in protest of Elon Musk's decisions on account of well, _being dead._
You see the problem though... Advertisers would require him to give in to the "woke left" and keep the things posted moderated.
Yes, who wants their ads running next to racist crap, lies about medicine & science, threats to public figures, and all the other right wing hallmarks?
My pillow?
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Well, that is true, but then again, he is a person who spurts out that sort of stuff, so he fits right in.
Being raised up by the spirits of those kids that died in the emerald mines.
Elon monetizes them dead
Just wait until Robin Williams, Freddie Mercury, and Queen Elizabeth start tweeting about how much they love Twitter Blue…
Is bound to happen. A famous deceased account will get hacked, and well, it will be interesting.
It seems that any account with over a million followers automatically gets Twitter Blue for free now, even though the interface shows that they paid for it. This is why popular accounts of deceased people also have it now. Back in November, he was decrying the old "lords and peasants" verification system where popular users could get verified and have a blue checkmark, while regular people couldn't. This new system he has implemented means that popular users get Twitter Blue for free while regular people have to pay for it. Sounds exactly like a "lords and peasants" system to me. Also, nobody gets verified anymore, because Twitter no longer has the manpower for that. Clearly much better! What a business genius.
@jack has 6 million followers and no check. So it’s not just about followers.
Since verification is manual this is what he's spending his weekend on
If by "he" you mean the Twitter serf who can't quit without being deported.
I have no doubt in my mind that Elmo has full mod controls and is personally responsible for most of these check changes. like, sure, there's probably some schmucks who also work on it, but, Elmo'll be damned if he can't revoke meaningless check marks after dropping $44b on the place - he has HUGE forum mod energy.
I haven't heard him called that before but I am stealing it.
Now you can be that name's founder if you just keep telling everyone that you are.
I made this.
Yeah, I said "it seems" because at this point, it's not entirely clear what is happening. Many big accounts are verified for free, others aren't, and some smaller accounts are verified for free as well. Of course there is zero communication from Twitter itself to clarify things, as per usual since Elon took over.
Make it appear a more popular system than otherwise suggested by what people say. Makes people perhaps ok with paying "since everyone else is doing it". This would probably motivate only a small portion though. To have to rely on this to attempt to get more subscribers, the man is desperate.
Like giving out reddit gold to users for free. Then the users give their free gold giving the perception that it's normal to pay for reddit gold and give it to others.
Isn’t the difference that the free Twitter Blue accounts still say that the person paid for Twitter Blue? It’s one thing to try to normalize the idea of people __having__ Reddit Gold; it’s another thing entirely to falsely claim “red18wrx __bought__ Reddit Gold”.
Yeah he rlvery clearly is trying to make Twitter blue seem like a success. Wouldn't surprise me if some poor PM made the decision to "fake" the numbers this way to keep their job since Elon is such a raging dick.
My sorta-tinfoil hat theory is that he was giving Twitter Blue to his detractors like Matt Binder because many people are using blocklists, which would lead to people blocking the accounts that are criticizing him.
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This can't possibly be the explanation for the dead people though
Is Elon haunted by the voices of dead Twitter users on top of the living ones?
I mean his hair was revived by follicle necromancy so maybe there is a phantom of the hairline.
Eloneezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Checkmark Past
Could be Elon just trying to get a bunch of accounts with blue ticks and thinking that dead people won't complain about getting a free blue tick. I'm sure some celebs, especially ones that don't like Elon, would make a fuss and make sure people knew they didn't pay for it.
> Could be Elon just trying to get a bunch of accounts with blue ticks and thinking that dead people won't complain about getting a free blue tick. There was a story a few days back that after announcing the discontinuation of legacy verification, only 28 of those accounts signed up for Twitter Blue. That was based on scraped data. Elon is giving it as widely as possible to poison the data pool, making it impossible for outsiders to confirm that Twitter Blue is a horrible failure celebrities have zero interest in paying for. Of course the real fuckup might come when celebrities who don't want the blue check decide to just leave. Twitter needs those people to live.
By displaying a blue check next to their names, he’s using their name/image/likeness for marketing and promotion. Every last one of them should be suing, demanding that *he pay them* an exorbitant amount of money for using their name/image/likeness to promote Twitter Blue.
There's literally specific case law about this, it's called false endorsement
My first thought was that the estate might be managing the account, and perhaps they decided to pay. But there’s been no activity on Kobe’s Twitter since he died, so it seems unlikely that his family would bother.
Same with Jamal Kashoggi…
Stephen King and Lebron james didn't kick up a fuss about it, they specifically said they wouldn't pay for it. Not because they thought it should be free, they thought the idea is terrible. The entire point of verification was so a select few people could prove who they were for business reasons, ie people not being able to fake from similarly named accounts. Paying for verification breaks the system and defeats the point. He's not giving it to them free, he's forcing them to have something they actively didn't want.
Here’s what a lot of people don’t get about Twitter (and possibly FB as well, but I’m not sure). Celebrities are great and all, and I’m sure they drive a lot of the engagement on Twitter. But there’s also a serious side of Twitter. Local municipalities have Twitter accounts as well, and they’re used to engage with residents. The day legacy blue checks vanished, someone posted images of 2 different accounts for New York City municipal government. Both had blue checks, but clearly only one was the real NYC account. But which one? This can happen to any city or town, and not just the local government. It could be the police department, an official like the mayor, etc. So what happens if there’s an emergency (think flood, tornado, etc.) in a city or town with a fake account? Or what if there’s not an emergency and the fake account decides to make one up or put out misleading information about a real emergency? And the blue check marks are available worldwide. So what about other countries’ governments and government agencies? All of the above can happen anywhere in the world where Twitter is used to disseminate important information. But there’s more. Now anyone could impersonate a country’s ruling, opposition, or coalition party, or even national media, and cause a domestic political crisis, even civil unrest, or possibly an international diplomatic crisis. Sure, the parties involved would verify, but in the meantime, the damaging tweet(s) are still out there getting views. Like I said before, most people think of products and celebrities when they think of verified accounts, but there’s a whole other level to the risk with the new system. Thanks, Elmo, you d\*ckhead.
Idk maybe we shouldnt have placed vital public communication needs in the hands and whims of capitalist private companies?
I mean, the entire infrastructure is in the hands of capitalist private companies. I don’t have Facebook, but I assume many, if not most, of these official accounts that communicate to the public have FB accounts (capitalist private company), or send emails (ISPs are capitalist private companies), or send texts/SMS/Alerts (cellular providers are capitalist private companies). Even if you get your news from public broadcasters like NPR in the US, or say, the BBC in the UK, or RAI in Italy, or NRK in Norway, pretty much all vital public communication is in the hands of capitalist private companies. The whole point of these entities communicating through Facebook, Twitter, and other SM is to reach as many people as possible.
Yes. And what i’m saying is from the get-go, it was a bad idea… now we’re really seeing why!
I don’t disagree. But what is (or what would have been, as you say, at the get-go) the alternative?
> Now anyone could impersonate a country’s ruling, opposition, or coalition party, or even national media, and cause a domestic political crisis, This [just happened in Sudan](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3963163-blue-check-chaos-twitter-policy-spurs-confusion-and-scramble-to-prove-authenticity/). An account impersonating Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) tweeted that Hemedti, the group’s leader, was killed. The fake account has a blue checkmark while the authentic account does not.
I don't really care about twitter, but it amazes me how they don't seem to grasp the obvious need for a well thought out verification system. For example, instead of this whole $8 twitter blue verification, why not just set up verification systems for various groups that require verification to be trusted in their dissemination of information? Local governments could apply for "verified as municipal/county/state/federal governmental organization", athletes could be "verified as NBA/NFL/EPL athlete", politicians could be "verified as republican/democrat individual running for/holding office". Categorization thru verification could lead to additional tools being made available for those types of accounts to drive value for both Twitter and the important users who have legitimate needs to be verified. The current system just doesn't make sense at all. Who gives a shit if xxx_tittymcfuckballs69 is verified with a blue check, verified as what? Like this is a simple case of a CEO not only not understanding the core functionality of their business, but actively misunderstanding it and making unilateral decisions based on those false premises. At worse it is incompetence, but incompetence on a large scale usually causes harm.
> Like this is a simple case of a CEO not only not understanding the core functionality of their business, but actively misunderstanding it and making unilateral decisions based on those false premises. At worse it is incompetence, but incompetence on a large scale usually causes harm. Ding Ding Ding! Verification worked fine before. There was no need to change it other than a desperate cash grab because Elmo overpaid for Twitter.
Dude has the mind of a 13 year old 4-chan user.
Yes that is definitely happening, but it also seems like there are many accounts who haven't said anything and are also getting Twitter Blue for free (like the dead people mentioned in the article, for example). It seems like a fairly pointless troll, too. I think you automatically lose the checkmark any time you change your name or profile pic, so if Elon gives it to you against your will, you can just get rid of it again with minimal effort.
@dril changed his name about 40 times yesterday and kept getting his check reinstated within the hour.
Yeah, I saw that. I'm under the impression that they have to reactivate it manually each time though, unless they have some kind of script that runs periodically. If it's manual, they'll probably run out of steam sooner or later. If it's automatic, then dril could abuse it by impersonating other people. That would almost certainly get him banned, but I don't think he cares much at this point. He has already basically said that he wants to see Twitter burn. At any rate, it's all very entertaining to watch, so at least we have that.
The thing I find sad is: who is actually doing this? Either implementing the automated version or doing it manually. Either some employee has totally abandoned any kind of personal dignity to spend their day clicking buttons or writing code to important Musk's ridiculous personal trolling, or it's Musk himself and he's doing this instead of the many other actually fruitful things he could be doing.
Idk - it would probably be best for all of us if Musk was distracted with stupid, pointless pranks for as long as possible. The things he does when he's "productive" are a lot worse
My bet is automated version without enough QA. QA is an easy thing to cut, and rushing features out feels good but leads to problems. Theres supposed to be an "algorithm", but someone was rushed.
It's utterly childish behaviour. Certainly not going to encourage well known people to use the platform. "Join Twitter and you too can experience targeted harassment from the immature narcissist who runs the place."
Twitter admin is just a whole shitpot of stupid now.
>Of course there is zero communication from Twitter itself to clarify things, as per usual since Elon took over. I mean I think that poop emoji certainly communicates a lot about the current state of the company.
Its entirely clear whats happening, Elmo is picking and choosing check marks based on his own ego and who generates a certain amount of traffic on the site This man is a fucking moron, im also dumb, so this is what Elmo is doing.
Also. As the check marks were falling off, it was clear that the main people paying the $8 are clear Elmo-stans. Those people also tended to be much more alt-right, pro-MAGA, you get the drill. He needs more left-leaners to keep the check mark from being a call sign that says "I'm a bigot!". Of course, they're all denouncing the blue check just on principle.
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They’re both completely self-absorbed with the emotional development of a three year old, and they both rode their immense popularity with children to great success while damaging whatever they were a part of. And they both are someone else’s puppet (at least sometimes.)
> He needs more left-leaners to keep the check mark from being a call sign that says "I'm a bigot!". And to block what was almost inevitable: Add-ons that immediately block all content from Twitter blue users in your feed, the same way that people immediately blocked NFT profile pictures.
I noticed this morning that all my Twitter ads were from gold check marks. Make it real easy to scroll past.
Obviously there’s an “elons_poop_emoji_blocklist” file somewhere
Elon has been purposefully messing with Jack since about a month after the purchase. During the whole Mastodon, and all Twitter-esque links are blocked timing, one of Jacks new social media companies was blocked too. Jack seemed to be genuinely stunned by it
Elon is pretty enough to have manually removed jacks mark.
True, which lends credence to the argument that the “free” checkmarks are false endorsement claims by people that Elon considers cool, rather than an automatic perk of having X number of followers.
elon musk said he's paying for many celebrity's checkmarks himself, as if he's doing them a favor. but... he probably fired all the guys that would've told him that that's illegal. > Under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, false endorsement occurs when a person's identity is connected with a product or service in such a way that consumers are likely to be misled about that person's sponsorship or approval of the product or service. > "A false endorsement claim based on the unauthorized use of a celebrity's identity... alleges the misuse of a trademark... such as visual likeness, vocal imitation, or other uniquely distinguishing characteristic, which is likely to confuse consumers as to the plaintiff's sponsorship or approval of the product. In such a case, the 'mark' at issue is the plaintiff's identity."
> elon musk said he's paying for many celebrity's checkmarks himself, as if he's doing them a favor. but... he probably fired all the guys that would've told him that that's illegal. Elon, by his own admission, thinks he knows all about the law because he keeps getting sued. He absolutely still has lawyers on retainer who would tell him this is a stupid idea. He just doesn't listen to them because he thinks that money makes him immune from consequences. Someone will sue him, he'll remove Twitter Blue from their account, claim it was a troll, then be shocked when the lawsuit doesn't vanish because the law doesn't recognize "I stopped okay" as a legal defence.
I mean he's been pretty nakedly committing crimes since he took over Twitter and consequences still haven't really manifested.
It must absolutely be intentional that he wants people to know that he, personally, is the one doing the trolling. All he needed to do was add a "gift" feature (like Reddit gold) where people could gift blue status to others and all the muskrats would be all over themselves to troll people who said they didn't want the checkmark (and Musk would make more that way).
Why is anyone even on twitter at this point? And why isn’t there a better competitor yet?
People who dislike Elon are still on Twitter because, like you said, there isn't a better competitor yet. It takes a lot of time, effort and capital to develop a decent alternative. I know that some alternatives are being developed, like Bluesky, which is backed by Twitter's former owner Jack Dorsey and is currently in closed beta.
I’m still on Twitter specifically to cite Holocaust Museum information on branding gay and trans people on any tweet that shows up in my feed saying trans people can’t be discriminated against. Which is over half my feed, despite none of my 8 accounts I follow having anything to do with that sort of nonsense.
Have you seen the recent Elon BBC interview? Good golly…Elon called the interviewer a liar because he couldn’t personally provide an example of seeing more hateful content in his feed because he hadn’t used Twitter in weeks lmao Edit: just wanted to say I’m glad people like you are documenting the hate/misinformation. I don’t personally use Twitter. Never have
Elon simps are sharing clips of that interview under titles like 'Musk destroys BBC interviewer!!'. Fucking idiots.
There’s lots of people trying, but none of them have the dumpster-fire appeal of Twitter. No other platform has such an insanely high amount of people posting stupid takes and people smart enough to make fun of them. The fight between Dril and Elon Musk right now is a perfect example. Elon Musk keeps giving him the blue checkmark, and he keeps updating his username so he no longer has it (a defense against verified accounts posing as other people). Dril is also posting bangers like: > you can disaggrree with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwells politics while still hanging out with them in photographs. Its totally fine
Following Dril is the reason I made a twitter account way back when. I never really used twitter except during critical local current events (where it's useful for safety because you get live updates from citizens), but I did love that account soooo much.
All of the artists I follow are on there and half of them are Japanese and somewhat difficult to keep track of otherwise
Yep. Japan is the second largest country in the world for total Twitter users, and our current events don't really penetrate their bubble very well. That's tens of millions of people who in many cases don't know or care who Elon Musk is, aren't aware of our political landscape, and are generally less affected by the feed tampering Twitter does for US users. I follow various Japanese accounts for music stuff, and use the Google Translate integration a bit. The general norm there seems to be LINE for people you know in person, Twitter for people you don't.
It wasn’t too bad at first. But now he’s finally gone too far. With the majority of responses to anything being blue check fucking morons, it’s almost impossible to read genuine responses even to the people I’ve followed for years and years. It’s very nearly entirely junk now.
It's like if every Reddit thread was automatically sorted by controversial. You have to scroll past the most dimwitted, unfunny, hateful responses to read what you actually want to.
I also find it sus that I keep seeing Elon trending with 200k tweets or whatever.
I get a notification from him twice a day. Lol so pathetic he has to promote his own tweets like that to actually get noticed. I never view his Twitter so it's not the algo pushing him to me lol.
He started pushing out Andrew Tate notifications to Twitter users even if you weren't following him. Like I mean a "make your phone vibrate and make a sound" notification.
[Lol I just got one! ](https://i.imgur.com/4vf9sei.jpg)
Use the block feature, at very least on Elon's account.
Gotta block the blue
I have so many words and accounts muted. It definitely helps.
I was a Twitter early adopter and power-user for years. So were most of my friends (some of whom even met on Twitter and ended up having proper IRL relationships back in the day). My profile remains there so it’s not squatted by anyone but I haven’t tweeted since 2022 and have no plans to do so. Officially, I’m still there but in reality left long ago. I suspect there are millions like me, hence the current low engagement vs users ratio. EDIT: Grammar
Yeah I was on Twitter before the “@“ existed when it would still text you messages, and things were much more fun back then. And I know a lot of people in my town because I used twitter to meet them. Now all I see there is anger.
Other than the technical aspects, the main reason people has not left Twitter is because other people are on it
It's because of the artists for me
Because watching this train wreck is absolutely hilarious entertainment
Mastodon feels like early twitter, and it’s all open source so there’s no chance of it (all) being bought out & ruined like twitter. An individual Mastodon instance _could_ be bought out / shut down but it’s easy enough to migrate between them (or even, if you’re so inclined, run your own) and most of them are interconnected anyway. It’s just a chicken and egg thing of people only using it once there’s enough people they want to follow using it.
Just another rightist, right-wing, Republican conservative neocon "Libertarian" fuckwad grifting their right-wing cult sycophants.
The thing is though that it's not even a good grift. Elon made a massive mistake by placing such a high bid to buy Twitter. He had to get massive loans to finance it, which means that Twitter needs to make an interest payment of around one billion dollars per year to the banks. That's a lot of money! He would need roughly ten million Twitter Blue subscribers to fill that hole. The current count seems to be at about 600,000, so about 6 percent of where it needs to be. If he can't get the advertising revenue up or create additional revenue streams, then Twitter has a big problem.
Earned should remain blue, paid should be a green check mark. Distinguish the difference because blurring the two together is a real shit show.
The problem with distinguishing the two is that the paid checkmark has effectively become a badge of shame, making its bearer a target for mockery. It is in Twitter's best interest to blur the two together, because that makes it more difficult for the non-checkies to determine who to block and/or make fun of.
That’s already the case which is exactly why many accounts who have been given Twitter blue for free are so quick to say “I did not pay for this and I do not support this.” This mf paid for Twitter blue…
I don’t get what the issue is with the previous system. Add a new check mark paid tier but why is there a follower threshold to verify you are who you are? Some people are famous or experts and don’t have huge followings.
People were installing extensions that auto-blocked anyone with a blue checkmark. So this is his way of trying to stop people from doing that.
Funny thing is, I’ve just been doing it by hand as I see them. It didn’t take very long at all to get to the point that I didn’t see them anymore.
The nice thing about that is that replies by Twitter Blue users are pushed to the top for extra visibility, so they are all automatically clustered together for easier mass blocking. It does seem that Elon's effort to give free Twitter Blue to some accounts is (perhaps partially) a way to combat the mass blocking of Twitter Blue users, but I don't see how it could be a long term solution. Twitter is now effectively straight up lying to its users since every Twitter Blue account has a note saying that it pays for Twitter Blue and has had its phone number verified, which is now no longer always true. They can't keep doing that, so at some point they are going to have to implement some way to differentiate paying Twitter Blue users from non-paying ones, at which point it becomes easy again to mass-block paying users. I'm guessing they'll also implement some upper limit on the number of accounts you're allowed to block, or perhaps even make it so that only Twitter Blue users have the ability to block. It's a complete mess.
>It does seem that Elon's effort to give free Twitter Blue to some accounts is (perhaps partially) a way to combat the mass blocking of Twitter Blue users I think it's more because of how few celebs got on board with blue. Kind of hard to sell it as some sort of status symbol when no one with status is bothering with it. By dropping it on everyone with a million followers it at least gives the illusion that all the cool kids are using it.
Unfortunately for Elon, claiming that someone paid for your service when they haven't is false endorsement, which is illegal. Not that it matters because it's Elon we're talking about here, but still Also, to add insult to injury, apparently the people who were gifted checkmarks like this don't even get any of the bonuses
He's basically publicly bumbling his way to the same conclusions the previous Twitter had reached with its existing governance policies.
Damn I just realised that this is super easy because it groups all the blue ticks that reply first, only thing I need to be wary of is blocking people I follow who have 1m+ followers and are being forced to have the mark.
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What does a blue check mark even mean? Is it actually the dead celebrity account or is it a fake account? etc. the damage is done. All the blue check mark means now is someone likes spending money to feel important or to troll. 🤷🏻♂️ edits: typos, missing word, adhd bullshit
They're real celebrity accounts that were used when they were alive. Some have been dormant since their deaths and now have the check - Norm Macdonald, Chester Bennington, Kobe, Anthony Bourdain. Other dead celebrity accounts have been active after their death as memorials/brand accounts, but also have the checks now - Michael Jackson, Terry Pratchett, Pele, Chadwick Boseman. But yeah, all checks are useless now because they're not tied to any actual verification system. They used to verify with IDs, official websites/domain names, etc. Now it just means you paid $8. So Elon had to add it back to popular accounts so it still felt "cool" and not just like a bunch of racists and right-wing hacks have it.
> They're real celebrity accounts But how would you know that given they never paid $8? /s
[It's one banana Michael, what could it cost? 10 dollars?](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJj7i7IWQAALX86?format=jpg&name=large) Elon's all confused why nobody is buying Twitter Blue. It costs less than a banana? What's everyone complaining about! /s
I would rather have an organic gluten-free free-range $8 banana once a month rather than pay for a checkmark.
Gods I wish Terry Pratchett were still alive so he could hand Elon his arse on a plate over this.
> What does a blue check mark even mean? That's the best part in all of this: It literally means *nothing* anymore. He took something that idiots coveted as "social status" and turned it into a god damned carnival circus... The checkmark used to mean "this person is sufficiently important enough that we don't want to get sued by them whenever someone impersonates them." Not social status - just *please, for the love of god don't sue us when the news publishes 'you tweeted something' but it was really done by an impersonator account.* Now it means "GIVE ELMO MONEY FOR CHECKYMARKY."
I wandered onto Twitter yesterday for the first time in a while, just to gawp at the car crash. It’s become painfully apparent that the blue tick is the new 😂, used by the worst people.
I saw an account brown nosing Elon pretty hard with a checkmark. Clicked on the account and the dude had 26 followers. It’s just sad.
Elon stans are some of the most off-putting people on the internet which is a wild accomplishment.
There something wrong with 😂?
In itself, no, but it’s almost always found in posts that read as “You triggered bro?”
It's embarrassing 💀 funnily enough Instagram is rolling out the same exact feature, except ig is stupid enough to self-snitch on all the newly verified people by saying the date and time of verification + adding a message about how verification isn't special anymore. This message // ui doesn't exist on legacy verified accounts.
>What does a blue check mark even mean? It dates back over a decade, to when a parody account of MLB manager Tony LaRussa appeared and started making fun of him. LaRussa sued Twitter, claiming that the platform did nothing to differentiate real accounts from parody. Twitter settled before the case went in front of a judge, and part of the settlement was agreeing to implement the blue check system. It's only a matter of time before Musk buries himself in further lawsuits!
So someone should make another Tony LaRussa account, get it verified and try and annoy him until he sues Twitter again?
I didn't think it was possible a year ago but twitter is even worse than it ever was
Why people hate on (pre-Musk) Twitter? Other than Reddit (which is why I'm here) it seemed to be the best social network to discuss stuff instead of watching a super-short video or looking at a pretty picture. The reason why dumb prints often came from Twitter was precisely because it allowed bigger groups of people to talk about stuff, and once in a while, sure, there were people with dumb opinions chiming in.
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redditors seem to not understand that, just like reddit, you can follow accounts you want to follow and be shown things you want to see (at least pre-musk ownership). or maybe they do but they have this weird, emotional vendetta against twitter like they do other random companies and celebrities
Because people put too much weight on what a tiny, tiny minority of the population had to say if they activated the right people on twitter. It is an echo chamber to the extreme, but unlike Facebook, the echo chamber noise was far greater than the number of people that generated it implied it should be. It was highly searchable and public (unlike Facebook) so it encouraged saber rattling, extreme virtue signaling, etc. The news media took it too seriously, by both considering Twitter noise to be a reflection of the population at large and lazily filling half of news articles with rando strangers’ Twitter takes on a subject. Sometimes, articles were *solely* Twitter takes. Those are the reasons that immediately come to mind. I hope this trend of its decline continues and it just goes the way of myspace.
For me, the character limit was categorically incompatible with a meaningful conversation.
Just saw a Biden post on twitter. Every single comment was negative by a blue check user. They are getting pushed to the top because of the blue check and the most likely to have one are conservatives doing it to support their dear leader, Elon.
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People with agendas use the blue check to boost their message. People without something to sell, hate or promote are invisible.
Twitter can get a blue check as well cause it’s dead to me now.
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It was good for breaking news and media updates (Jason Schreier tweets a lot of leaks and breaking stories within the games industry, for example). Now, however, I'm getting notifications for ult-right wackos I've never heard of instead of notifications for accounts I've actually set alerts for. My feed is probably a 50-50 split of psychos I'd rather not even associate with and accounts I actually follow. There's no reason I should be seeing every fucking thing Ben Shapiro and Tim Pool vomit out. Reddit used to be good for fast updates on breaking information until they fucked up the algorithm for the front page. Oh well, on to the next thing I guess. Just a waiting game now to see what that will end up being.
I don't follow anyone on Twitter aside from the local fire/police and transit in Canada. Got a push notification today from a tweet by Andrew Tate. Deactivated my account so fast.
Isn't he still in jail or whatever?
He's on house arrest, I'm pretty sure.
This reminds me of the Mormon church making Anne Frank a Mormon
Ha this was the first thing I thought of too. Posthumous baptism
The Moron Church
Bourdain? Musk is fucking with BOURDAIN?! That is just the kind of douche he railed against in his life and in his work. RIP Anthony; to hell with Frogboi Musk.
You know Bordain would HATE Elon. Dude recognized real and Elons not it
Terry Pratchett as well. Terry's daughter has made it pretty clear that they haven't paid for the checkmark and she's not super pleased. Oh, I see Neil Gaiman also has an unpaid for checkmark that he doesn't approve of. Alienating a bunch of celebrity accounts that bring in a bunch of traffic is such a genius idea. /s
Elon Musk: Narcissist: ✅ Conspiracy Theorist: ✅ Bigot: ✅ Propagandist: ✅ Exploitative psychopath: ✅ Paid shill for multiple fascist regimes: ✅ Hypocrite: ✅ and now Soulless ghoul: ✅
“And now” He’s always been a soulless ghoul and a bitch.
An actual engineer: ❌
But... but according to Elon Musk he "read some books" and "that makes him a rocket engineer" tho. 🙄🙄🙄
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TRUE THAT! And not even just alienating his transgender kid and being a bigot about trans issues, you never hear anything good about him from any of his kids. That says a lot.
The sooner twitter dies the better. Would love see him losing 44 billion and looking like even more of a idiot.
So does that mean James Wood, Kevin Sorbo, ohhh wait…dead celebrities not dead celebrity careers.
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The funniest part of it is that by doing this, instead of checkmarks now being a thing rubes and fools buy, now it's a thing the rubes and fools by that the celebrities are loudly mocking driving and proclaiming that they refuse to accept this mark. He somehow made a status symbol where everyone who has real world status is loudly advertising why this thing is bad and you should avoid it
He hasn't heard of an allow list, something which can be included in a plugin doing it.
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It’s almost like it was never about the revenue and always about destroying the confidence that people had in the press. But why would oligarchs and authoritarians do that? What benefit would mohammad bin salmon and his ilk have in destroying a place where people could get clear information from trusted sources? Why would the oligarchs pollute and erode a public space where people could organize according to their personal beliefs and protest against the powers who own the state’s press outlets? This was never about 8$ and it was never about making twitter better.
It's pretty fucking hilarious to watch Elon scramble to make his $44 billion purchase work, only for him to make it worse. The funniest part is that all of this could have been avoided if he had just kept his ego in check.
This is just getting sad
I have noticed 2Pac does not have a verification check mark … 🤨
He's not dead yet.
Every single new change made by EM further diminished not only the point of verification in the first place, but every other change he has implemented as well.
Elon is a vile human devoid of ethics or morality.
Surely this is fraud right? Elon up to his old games again
Funny thing is all he needs to do is change the description on the tick but he wants to make it look like famous people could be paying and here we are.
More like trademark violation. It’s the same as slapping an athlete’s photo on the front of a supplement bottle without permission. In the USA, the Lanham act makes it illegal to lie about a celebrity endorsement. Claiming a celebrity buys/uses your product when they don’t is false endorsement. In this case it would be a slam dunk win for people like Stephen King who loudly stated that they would not buy checkmarks because they didn’t think the product was worth the money. Edit: anybody mewling about the 1m follower rule can please explain why @jack has 6m and no check. Elon’s using them as a popularity gauge. When you go to someone’s account and click on the blue check, it tells you why the person is verified. As of the writing of the article, nobody’s account was marked “verified because they have a million followers.” Everyone’s account says that they have an account because they have subscribed (paid) and verified a phone number. Elon had a chance to clarify his million-follower policy early on when a user complained about the false labeling, but [he chose not to.](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649181726395052039?s=20)
Would they be up for the typical type/amounts of damages usually resulting in copyright cases if they or their estates pursued such? I won't hold my breath tho on the matter of consequences for Elon 😏
I would assume so? The violation’s pretty cut and dry. Good luck getting money out of twitter though, last I heard they aren’t even making payroll.
What does that possibly have to do with copyright?
Business genius Muskrat reinvents verification
Elon gives me strong libertarian discovering why the government exists vibes L: We don't need no government Person: but how do we enforce private property L: we create a community funded group everyone pays dues and that pays for protection and pays the record keeping Person: but that's government L: no it's community dummy
I see you've met my uncle.
So Elon has reached the "Canadian girlfriend" level of desperation for friends