Originally published at: Elon Musk slaps free Twitter Blue checks on critics, whether they want it or not | Boing Boing
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There’s still the gold and grey ones to laugh at.
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As always… Maybe don’t use Twitter?
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Bette Midler’s still got it!
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At this point I’d wager he’d just have inactive but popular accounts just repost old tweets as if they were new just to make it look like very popular people who left are still using it.
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The crazy thing here is that Elno is personally involved in this, based on his comments, and all it does is further devalue the blue check marks. The marks don’t pretend to actually be part of a verification system (people have been openly impersonating others at every stage of this ever-shifting new system), their inconsistent presence in the accounts of famous people is meaningless, and now they’re being used to punish people. More than that, it’s illegal - the description of the mark explicitly says that the user has paid for it, and by “giving” it to famous people, he’s trying to make the mark more appealing to others by making them believe that famous people are purchasing it, when they’re not.
The basic stupidity of the mindset that led to this is really something - right wingers were upset that “elites” had these check marks and they didn’t. The “elites” had them because they were famous (or at least public figures at risk of impersonation), and they lacked them because they, well, weren’t. By turning the check marks into something anyone could buy, it entirely misses the point, and they still don’t get it. Now the right-wingers are upset that the “elites” don’t want them anymore - they mistook the check marks for status symbols, but are not only discovering they actually aren’t, but currently function the opposite way.
Well, he gave the marks to dead people with inactive accounts, so…
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Yeah… this is basically the “dating app” methodology. “Look at how many people have blue checkmarks, you should toooo”
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Elon Musk
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It’s amazing how quickly he turned the most coveted thing in all of social media into a punishment everyone is fleeing from.
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Easy fix: abandon Musk’s Folly. We had a valid physical reason to use FB over ten years ago – no other signals reached into our narrow, rocky canyon in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands then – but we’ve avoided Musk’s Folly for a long time now. No loss, hey?
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Pettiness, thy name is Elon.
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He’s gone full Sylvester McMonkey McBean.
Off again! On again!
In again! Out again!
Still waiting to see if he realizes the Sneetches are starting to wake up.
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That’s how they do it in the emerald mines.
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- Assign blue tick to everyone who doesn’t want it and won’t pay for it
- Charge $8 a month to take it away
- Profits!
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There’s been some suggestion that everyone who was previously verified with at least a million followers was given it automatically (minus any of the actual benefits), but Elno hasn’t come out and said so (and he’s had plenty of opportunities), and it seems to have been inconsistently applied. But yeah, it’s very much the “look at these famous people who have paid for the check mark, you should get it too,” which, when they’ve done no such thing, is rather illegal… not that Elno cares about such paltry things.
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It’s all so stupid. The blue check was never meant as a status symbol, nor was it meant as a revenue scheme. It was a way to say this account is legitimate. It just so happened that those blue checks were given to famous people, business, or government entities that were at risk of being impersonated.
Musk took something that wasn’t a real problem and turned it into one.
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Congratulations. I think you’ve just identified his business model.
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If it’s the Mark of the Bird (love it by the way), may I humbly suggest we refer to the Facebook version as Mark of the Mark?
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It was definitely treated as one, though, in Twitter’s hay day. Every serious user wanted one because it did give you an air of authority on the platform. Musk sort of grokked that which is probably why he tried to monetize it, but of course completely ruined everything that was good about it, as we all know. It’s so sad that he didn’t understand the basic fact that it loses all its value if you charge for it.
It was a status symbol specifically because you couldn’t just go get it. You had to be important enough in the first place to be worth impersonation. It was…… a symbol that indicated… your high status. Oh gosh, I’m working this out as I type that it was literally a status symbol. 
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