Yes, some journalists (the prototypical blue-check) are low-integrity. But this sort of class-war Maoist rhetoric is basically painting a target on the back of anyone with a whiff of "expertise" or "credential" or "bureaucratic authority" about them.
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This is either willful demagoguery or extreme cluelessness, and I don't think Musk is clueless.
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Yep. This is looking more and more like he's running twitter to work off vast resentments and grievances, and also process major Xi-envy. As with Trump, he seems to want the kind of absolute power that only attracts pure love or hate and shuts down thought
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Replying to @vgr
The $20 bluecheck fee is not about revenue (20 x 400k = meh) it's about cheapening it to drain the ancien regime bluechecks of their power.
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Hell no. He's not an "edge lord" ultimate or otherwise, simply because he co-opts the language of the edge. He's the emperor at the center focusing the spotlight every more narrowly on himself.
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He is the ultimate edge lord
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I'm glad plenty of people are clocking what's happening correctly. This is not innocent shit aimed at controlling bots or raising revenue. That's just the excuse. "Bots" are basically "evil foreign power" or "the devil" in this story.
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Replying to @vgr
original model:
Mao + radicalized students > middle class/CCP bureaucrats...
The Great Tweet Forward
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I've seen more than one expert/professional I respect (the terms in their regular, non-pejorative senses) announce a quiet-quit as in "I'll still be here but only to post events/papers etc."
These "lords" are half the value of this site to me at least.
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The move is not about an innocent redesign of the blue-check as a product feature. It is about the fact that a redesign is conveniently weaponizable against the broad class it's come to represent.
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But the blue check brought this upon itself by being ostensibly about identify verification, and then not even delivering that, while being a way for Twitter to bless certain users. A badge system based purely on follower counts, or open-for-all verification, make more sense.
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If you have a credential in your handle or profile, or an obviously middle-class-expertise indicator, now is probably the time to remove it
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I never bothered to apply for the bluecheck because the feature's flaws were obvious from day 1. But that didn't stop the term from coming to refer to a broad class that includes people like me, whether or not they actually had the checkmark.
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It’s interesting because I think of you more as an “anon” (get your status from what you Tweet) than a “bluecheck” (get your status from some external source)
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Sadly not true... in the path-dependent route I've taken to D-list status, there are credentials, institutions etc. cashed out along the way. It's illegible, but it's there.
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I’m sure, but if I found out that you were secretly, say, an Italian woman, you’d still be the person who wrote the Office blog post. But if I found out that the Tweet from the YLS Dean was actually from Lionel Hutz, it would materially change how I perceived it.
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I mean, my rise to the D-list wasn't that of an anon... even if I present as one... there were clear moments where access, institutional affiliations, and door-opening credentials played a hidden role. I didn't earn my followership the hard way being clever on here.
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