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Replying to
In the US, every sufficiently mature business turns into a health insurance business model where they charge for collectivizing risk but still try to make you pay for all your personal risks. And if you can’t, the nearest mark who can be made to.
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Tipping is a great example. It’s now “culture” that a waiter’s pay depends on diners’ sense of guilt at their low pay. The precarity risk is taken out of the business model and dumped on diners.
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Any “lords” considering the $8 — you’re helping establish a tipping culture here. Shouldering “peasant” risks from impersonators. Everything else is just random bundling extras that have no good reason to be attached to verification status.
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I’d actually be willing to pay for blue-like backend features that have no visible profile affordances. Selling fun affiliation badges or NFT display ability is also fine. Pretending the platform’s verification responsibility is a status “product” is just deeply disingenuous.
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Contra many people's take on this, I don't think the bluecheck was *ever* an actual status symbol. Where it did not actually point to an external credential that needed verification protection, it was a lolcow badge only ever made fun of. The insult was the canonical perception.
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If they intend this seriously, then why not just drop the bluecheck feature entirely and only do detail labels like "verified USG official" or "verified MD" etc.?
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Replying to @vgr
Per Musk they’re planning to use those "US government official"-type labels more widely. Presumably NYT reporters will get one. So they're not taking away the identify verification, only the weird status that built up around the little award-like badge.
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The reason this has turned into a "thing" is that they're trying to turn a negative-perception insult (bluecheck) into an aspirational branding for a bundled "Pro" feature suite.
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"Lord" is now supposed to mean "cheap box of useful tools for peasants that also includes toy lord badge for some reason" It's like if King Charles suddenly declared UK nobility titles would now be used to refer to branded car repair kits.
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Exactly. They let a reasonable business motive (introducing a premium product service tier) get contaminated by a random culture/class war dynamic in part because they have strong opinions on that war clouding their business judgment.
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Replying to @vgr
Not 100% clear. My guess is they want to launch a new premium tier anyway, and believe residual status of the checkmark will help them sell it. I do think this muddles things. Would be cleaner to get rid of checkmarks and then introduce a new tier as a clearly separate thing.
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If they actually were ideologically neutral like they pretend ("oh both left and right hate me haha I'm next-level neutral") the answer would have been obvious: drop the bluecheck, add free verification where needed for safety, offer a "twitter plus" airgapped from culture war
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Only for people whose only identity anchor is the bluecheck and have no life outside twitter. These people entirely deserve their identity crises and $8/mo therapy while they re-examine their life choices.
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Replying to @vgr
Losing blue checks (or their exclusivity) will trigger more identity crises than Trump leaving office. twitter.com/ideafaktory/st
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Love her or hate her, AOC is an important politician. If she refuses to pay $8 on principle, you're just inviting a lot of dumb impersonation disinfo noise around her. She remains important. Stephen King doesn't need $8 twitter status bs. He sells books by the truckload.
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Replying to
Yeah I’m curious, did blue check ever get you anything? I never cared enough to try but also, the fundamental problem never applied to me (eg, signaling who the “real” person/account is)