Musk haggles over price of a checkmark

[sdmikev]

@ClutchLinkey

Ummm, lots of us do. Because we don’t want to become a profit engine for evil fuckers. The only difference is that now we sometimes have options.
I think it’s easier not to care if you are not a member (or ally) of one of the groups that will be penalized for existing once these folks gain more power. Which, in the US and some other places, is now.

I mean, it’s easily found out if you wanted to know. I was thinking more along the lines of the below comment:

@awfulhorrid

While I do give a shit about who the CEO is at a given company or about the internal corporate culture, I’ll agree with the idea that I’d just as soon not have them achieve celebrity status for doing nothing except exploiting people out of billions of dollars. I swear I think they get away with even more of that now that they’ve reached this status because people will dismiss the negatives after reading that idiotic tweet where said Celebrity Executive Officer “owned the libs.”

Correct.
Everyone that winds up in the C suite winds up needed to have a walk up song like a batter coming to the plate when there’s an all-hands meeting.
I guess I’m old enough to remember when CEOs like William Hewlett & David Packard. They weren’t celebrities, they were engineers who founded a successful company.
Then HP wound up in the hand of what’s her name (who in my memory is kind of like the first CEO as celebrity) who was nothing but a slash and burn hack…

[falcon2001]

One of the frustrating things about Musk is that he has this idea that Twitter is a social good, but there’s already a company that pretty successfully modeled what that looks like, and it’s Craigslist. It’s dropped off a lot over time unfortunately, but CL was a successful site that never really took a heel turn into hardcore bullshit (unless, of course, I’ve missed a depressing news article somewhere), because it never seemed like the point was to build some enormous business, but instead to just…do a thing that needed to be done.

If I had Musk’s money I’d have just funded a twitter competitor for a tiny fraction of what Twitter cost. Although I guess there’s a lot more valuable things to be doing with his money beyond that.

[smulder]

@falcon2001

do a thing that needed to be done

… destroying the newspaper business?

[moortaktheundea]

@LordInsidious

I think he will get rid of bots. They are such a huge number if the previous team cleaned them out the user base numbers would have dropped significantly causing the share holders to freak out. Now he must gets those numbers regardless and there is no more share holders to worry about.

I doubt it. Bots are a massive technical challenge and he still has a raft of reasons to not stop them. Convincing bots are just users to advertisers. Additionally his only realistic hope from making money on this is flipping it to someone even more credulous and impulsive than he is. Large user numbers help that case too.

[almighty_bob]

I’m surprised people take twitter so seriously and actually care about a verification check mark.

[smulder]

nobody cares—that’s why it’s funny that he thinks anybody would pay for it

[RickMycroft]

Musk trying to price bluechecks.

[MikeR]

@Bonivus_elderheart

Anyone remember MySpace? That’s probably the best example I remember.

There was also Bebo, which, thanks to a radio telescope may well have provoked an alien invasion when the thoughts of its users reach Gliese 581 in six years time.

Bebo users release interstellar spamgasm at Gliese 581

[GilbertWham]

Plus, presumably, if it’s considered worth eight bucks a month to run a twitter bot by Twitter bot runners, they’ll find a way to pay it.

[tcg550]

Musk to AOC: ‘Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8’

[GilbertWham]

Or permanently embarrassing CEOs, as evinced by this foofaraw.

[RickMycroft]

[semiotix]

I’m just a badgeless nobody on Twitter (as opposed to belovéd BoingBoing, which grants me a military rank commensurate with my wisdom how long ago I signed up), but… Elon thinking* the function of the check mark is to mark someone as “elite” doesn’t make it so.

There’s “President Biden @POTUS ” and there’s a million versions of “President Joe Biden @P0TUS_America” and only one of them is authorized to get me a great deal on herbal Viagra. That’s what most of us normies use the checkmark for, not deciding who to feel inferior to.

* thinking, claiming to think, thinking someone wants him to think, momentarily imagining—whichever applies, and you never know with him

[Bunbain]

I’ve got to figure out what to do about my habit of downloading screenshots of pithy tweets such as this one:

Well I scribbled over the social media company’s identifying markings, but what a hassle!

[fauxreigner]

I almost wonder if that’s one of the options the $8 checkmark is meant to enable. Sell priority access to troll farms for pennies (remember, priced per region) and then talk about the huge number of verified, identified accounts on the site.

[milliefink]

@semiotix

only one of them is authorized to get me a great deal on herbal Viagra. That’s what most of us normies use the checkmark for, not deciding who to feel inferior to.

I thought that as on FBook, it’s also, or even mainly, to verify that you are you. Well-known people especially would want that verification to distinguish their own actual account from imitators, no?

[KathyPartdeux]

alex 🐀

[KathyPartdeux]

I’m really more interested in plausible deniability

[CanadianBeaver]

Rats now cost $20