Clearly Elon Musk is desperate for Twitter Blue to generate some income for Twitter seeing as advertisers are fleeing the platform. According to The Verge, here’s his latest idea:
Twitter won’t let accounts less than 90 days old sign up for its Blue subscription service when it relaunches (presumably on the 29th), according to an update to the About Twitter Blue page. This means that you won’t be able to just create a new account and instantly get it verified, which could be a bid to cut down on scams and impersonator accounts like the ones that almost immediately plagued the service the first time the updated Blue launched.
The old program didn’t have a set waiting period, according to an archive of the page provided by the Wayback Machine, but it did have a warning that “Twitter accounts created on or after November 9, 2022, will be unable to subscribe to Twitter Blue at this time.” While that restriction clearly wasn’t going to stick around forever, it is interesting that it’s being replaced with a specific number; in theory, people could stockpile troll accounts, knowing that they’ll be able to get them verified come March.
Yeah. So what this does is move the next occurrence of this problem to March of next year. It however doesn’t actually solve the problem. Which is anyone can get a blue checkmark. Though Musk thinks he has a way around that:
Twitter will have some policies in place to try and mitigate this; CEO Elon Musk has said that changing your verified name will make you lose your check mark until Twitter confirms your new name doesn’t violate its terms of service. (Musk has also said that if you want to create a parody account, you have to say it’s a parody in the name.) The new Twitter Blue page also says that the company “may also impose waiting periods for new accounts in the future in our discretion without notice,” which does add some ambiguity back to the rules around how you can get a blue check mark.
While those restrictions should keep people from getting verified and changing their name to match whoever is trending that day, we’ve seen a lot of impersonators go after evergreen targets instead, sometimes to great effect. It’s also unclear if the system has any way to deal with someone who changes their name and handle after 90 days but before signing up for Twitter Blue or how it will adjust as the internet’s pranksters worm their way around other new restrictions, $7.99 at a time.
At this point he’s grasping at straws. The only reason why he isn’t really addressing the problem is that he’s gambling that nothing bad will happen and he can maximize the amount of cash that he can make from people who want to “flex” by having the blue checkmark next to their name. The problem is that bad things have already happened. And people who want to do everything from pranking big companies to threat actors wanting to do anything from spread misinformation to messing with elections won’t be deterred by any of this. And it absolutely won’t get advertisers back onto the platform. Though I don’t think Musk cares about that. I think at this point he’s looking for a quick win. And any quick win will do given how badly he’s failed at running Twitter.
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This entry was posted on November 17, 2022 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Elon’s Latest Twitter Blue Brainwave Is New Twitter Accounts Can’t Subscribe To Twitter Blue For 90 Days
Clearly Elon Musk is desperate for Twitter Blue to generate some income for Twitter seeing as advertisers are fleeing the platform. According to The Verge, here’s his latest idea:
Twitter won’t let accounts less than 90 days old sign up for its Blue subscription service when it relaunches (presumably on the 29th), according to an update to the About Twitter Blue page. This means that you won’t be able to just create a new account and instantly get it verified, which could be a bid to cut down on scams and impersonator accounts like the ones that almost immediately plagued the service the first time the updated Blue launched.
The old program didn’t have a set waiting period, according to an archive of the page provided by the Wayback Machine, but it did have a warning that “Twitter accounts created on or after November 9, 2022, will be unable to subscribe to Twitter Blue at this time.” While that restriction clearly wasn’t going to stick around forever, it is interesting that it’s being replaced with a specific number; in theory, people could stockpile troll accounts, knowing that they’ll be able to get them verified come March.
Yeah. So what this does is move the next occurrence of this problem to March of next year. It however doesn’t actually solve the problem. Which is anyone can get a blue checkmark. Though Musk thinks he has a way around that:
Twitter will have some policies in place to try and mitigate this; CEO Elon Musk has said that changing your verified name will make you lose your check mark until Twitter confirms your new name doesn’t violate its terms of service. (Musk has also said that if you want to create a parody account, you have to say it’s a parody in the name.) The new Twitter Blue page also says that the company “may also impose waiting periods for new accounts in the future in our discretion without notice,” which does add some ambiguity back to the rules around how you can get a blue check mark.
While those restrictions should keep people from getting verified and changing their name to match whoever is trending that day, we’ve seen a lot of impersonators go after evergreen targets instead, sometimes to great effect. It’s also unclear if the system has any way to deal with someone who changes their name and handle after 90 days but before signing up for Twitter Blue or how it will adjust as the internet’s pranksters worm their way around other new restrictions, $7.99 at a time.
At this point he’s grasping at straws. The only reason why he isn’t really addressing the problem is that he’s gambling that nothing bad will happen and he can maximize the amount of cash that he can make from people who want to “flex” by having the blue checkmark next to their name. The problem is that bad things have already happened. And people who want to do everything from pranking big companies to threat actors wanting to do anything from spread misinformation to messing with elections won’t be deterred by any of this. And it absolutely won’t get advertisers back onto the platform. Though I don’t think Musk cares about that. I think at this point he’s looking for a quick win. And any quick win will do given how badly he’s failed at running Twitter.
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This entry was posted on November 17, 2022 at 2:49 pm 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.