The IT Nerd

This whole Twitter Blue which includes verification as part of the deal is turning out to be a gong show. In order to calm people down over having a whole bunch of verified people out there and the potential damage that can cause, Esther Crawford who is Director of Product Management at Twitter posted this series of Tweets hoping to clear up how verification will work under Twitter Blue:

Maybe I am looking at this wrong, but here’s what I see based on those Tweets:

• Elon Musk says that he must democratize verification.
• Elon Musk creates an unvetted blue check for all, with no ID verification.
• Elon Musk creates a verification scheme for government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures that adds “official” label to those accounts.

So what’s the point of the checkmark exactly? It seems me that charging $8 a month for it gives me a blue checkmark that says that I paid Twitter $8 a month. That’s it. There’s zero semblance of clout or status or whatever that Twitter’s current verification system gave to one who got what I called “the blue checkmark of validity.” So why should I fork over $8 a month based on that? That makes no sense. Besides, with this scheme there’s nothing stopping a rogue nation who say, wants to spread misinformation, from giving a bunch of bot accounts Twitter Blue subscriptions to get the check mark and as a bonus their Tweets will show up on more timelines more often because that’s a feature of Twitter Blue. What could go wrong there?

This is half baked scheme cooked up by Elon Musk. In fact, I would go as far as saying that this is a farce at this point. Maybe someone should tell Musk to take a time out and come back when he has some real ideas that would stop people and advertisers from fleeting the platform. Or alternately, he could sell Twitter to a bunch of people who know how to run a business and simply get out of their way. I’m good with either option at this point.

This entry was posted on November 9, 2022 at 8:48 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.