Basically asking people with external credibility worth faking to pay for verified status means Twitter is externalizing the cost of protecting *other* people to you. This is a classic and very American business move.
The “democratizing access to status” is unadulterated bs.
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“Oh sorry we let a hacker steal your personal info from out sucky systems. Here’s free 1-year identity theft protection plan, after which you can pay for it so we can continue to suck at securing your info”
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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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Replying to
> [the bluecheck] was a lolcow badge only ever made fun of
hmm I don't think this is actually true. An analogy is yachts: I don't think I've ever heard of anyone talk about yacht owners in a positive light, and yet they still get bought as, and work as, a status symbol.
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's ideas are key here: (i) humans are attracted to dominance, but ashamed of this, and so we pretend we're not, and (ii) more generally we've evolved very deep faculties for self-deception
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And I definitely remember when *I* got a bluecheck: my system-2 brain was of course dismissive but my system-1 brain definitely felt good about it, and not in a "yay my followers get protected from scams" way
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Hmm. When did you get your blue check? Because after 2017 or so you have been the biggest scam/impersonation risk around. If you hadn’t gotten it and I was twitter security I’d probably have enforced it anyway.
I never even thought about getting it. Seemed completely pointless at least for me. It seemed like a drivers license or passport except no actual use for me or anyone in relation to me.
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I forget when but I think it probably was around 2017 or so. Maybe shortly before the scams started becoming a big deal.
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