If it was just people annoying Muskrat, I’d be fine with it… but it isn’t, not by a long shot. Author Richard Kadrey’s name got sniped by a “verified” crypto account:
It’s been reported by multiple people, including me, but no action’s been taken yet AFAIK.
(Yes, I’m going to kill my account. But first I need to track down the notebook with my password so I can download my data, and I’m still gathering alternate contacts for people I want to keep in touch with. Plus, I’ve gotta admit, watching the roaring dumpster fire is kinda entertaining.)
Not really. He needs recurring revenue. Starting a parody account and wrecking an established brand for $8-16 destroys ad revenue without generating recurring revenue.
This is what Musk didn’t seem to understand about the concept: the blue check mark wasn’t intended as a status symbol for the cool kids, it was intended as a way for users to know whether the person posting as Oprah Winfrey was actually Oprah Winfrey. Now the checkmark ceases to serve any meaningful function in either capacity.
He not only did it; but did it deliberately. Having verification actually mean something is medieval despotism; while chaotic pay-to-play is, um, proletarian revolution but in a desirable-to-billionaire tech bros kind of way? Having this be a trivially foreseeable side effect of some other objective would have been a step up.
The problem is that even if Nintendo leaves twitter, this doesn’t prevent impersonators from sticking around and pretending to be Nintendo. There’s nothing they can do (except sue)!
He’s answering the question, “What if we took ‘move fast and break things’ to a ridiculous extreme?” when a more considered approach (and, I don’t know, maybe INPUT FROM OTHER PEOPLE) would be the best path.
The thing is, the fake accounts have tweets that are going viral, and there’s not necessarily enough information to tell what account they’re coming from (just that they’re “verified” and the user name looks official), and the really damaging thing is that people are complaining to the real corporate Twitter accounts about the fake ones, thinking they’re the same. Yeah, advertisers are so gone after this.
Those were my exact thoughts - except not two tech bros brainstorming, but one guy. Because he’s throwing out tons of ideas where if it were two people, the other person would be shooting them down for being too dumb. It’s hilarious to see him try to reassure advertisers/employees/whatever with his presentations, where everyone is expecting a solid plan, but instead he’s seemingly just brainstorming on the spot, throwing out whatever dumb idea just occurred to him (and everyone else is fully aware they won’t work).
I also keep thinking of someone fucking around with a sim every time Elon laughs at some indicator that everything is going to shit. Either he’s not smart enough to realize what it means, or it’s just not fundamentally real to him.
I was reading that given how many fewer ads each paid account is supposed to get, and especially if you pay through Google or Apple, Twitter is likely taking a loss on each paid account right now*. If you get booted and stop the credit card payment, it’s an even bigger loss for Twitter. (And that’s not even getting into the account impersonations that are doing it as scams - e.g. fake Twitter customer service accounts that are asking for people’s cryptocurrency wallets…)
*Of course, this is only true so long as there are advertisers still on Twitter. Which probably isn’t for long…
Just on a per-user basis, no less. The total damage to advertising on Twitter is substantially higher.
I mean, it’s actually even dumber than it needed to be. The original idea was supremely dumb (and didn’t understand verification), but the actual implementation (can’t easily distinguish authentication check marks and paid check marks) didn’t need to be this bad.
Musk reminds me of Trump more and more every day. Except when Trump would throw out a completely idiotic idea like “what if we dropped a nuclear bomb in the hurricane?” there was usually someone standing by to patiently explain why he couldn’t do that, and then after they got tired of trying to explain another person could step in to distract Trump with something shiny until he forgot all about it.
Well, they can also leave and post prominently on their websites and every other media channel available to them that they are not on Twitter and any accounts there are fake.
It won’t stop the impersonators, and it won’t stop the short term brand damage, but after a short while the fake accounts will be meaningless because all but the most gullible or internet illiterate users will understand that what they are seeing is not, actually Nintendo or Pepsi.
In the medium term, Twitter will likely be dead, and Muskrat will no longer be majority share holder of Tesla.
I’d say win-win, but a post in another thread about how Twitter’s death will hurt marginalized communities makes me sad about this outcome.
A third option is that this colossal failure is breaking him, if it hasn’t broken him already. His behavior reminds me of nothing so much as the hyperventilating flailing of someone who just realized that they made an epic, life ruining mistake, and is trying desperately to fix it. He just pissed away a fifth of his wealth. He’s probably going to lose control of Tesla. He owes a shit-ton of money to Prince BoneSaw. He needs money, and fast!
If Musk was at all a sympathetic figure, I’d feel bad for him. Instead, pass the popcorn. I can’t wait to see this King Lear go down!
I basically agree, there will be brand damage until we all collectively start to see twitter as a cesspool. So, this verification craziness continues, all big brands will be rooting for twitter do go down in flames.
