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Replying to
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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Presumably her badge says “congresswoman”. This moves the verification bar way up the spectrum from “rando self published author with 300 followers” closer to “only the king of England”. The rest are dumped back into the plebe pool. Not clear to me there’s a value issue here.
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Nah, it's not a troll. He has billions on the line here and the optics of his first experimental moves have been terrible. Her millennial status is irrelevant. She's got serious influence over how people respond to this.
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Sure. As I said further down he’s talking to his investors with all this. And to some extent the “peasants”. He has clearly intentionally disregarded the hive mind of the center to left blue check borg. He’s intentionally deprioritizing them. He wouldn’t say he’s messed it up.
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He was told to get lost by some woke local SF legislator and he is quite literally moving out to other states. He has money at risk and knows of consequences, the White House also now knows it's misinformation is getting flagged. Getting cross with him is quite tricky!