4 ms·

This seems like a really bad product idea. Blue checkmarks were an important safety for users to know which accounts were legitimate. And now they are taking aw

This seems like a really bad product idea. Blue checkmarks were an important safety for users to know which accounts were legitimate. And now they are taking away the ID verification part of the system?

mackatap 4y ago
Anybody with a blog claiming to be a journalist could get verified, I saw plenty of verified accounts that were nobody scammers.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  I’d be curious to see a couple examples.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- throw101010 4y ago
  Some of these might also have been hacked blue checkmark accounts resold/reused. Which also was one of the issue with this status symbol, as far as I know the "verification" was a one time event per account.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  now they just need to be a nobody scammer who has $8/mo
  - agentofoblivion 4y ago
    I think the point is that it’s hard to scale this. I’ve worked in the fraud space for awhile and a big problem is sophisticated actors that scale their operation and cause a lot of damage. If you can make it more expensive to scale, you can change the economics. For example, if it cost 1 cent to send an email, you would probably solve a big chunk of the spam problem.
sameers 4y ago
There's still a lot of confusion about what exactly this service entails. The Reuters article itself says, "It was not immediately clear how or if Twitter planned to verify the identity of the user beyond charging a fee." From the little I read of Musk's tweets, he isn't making clear if existing ticks will need payment to remain; whether ID verification will be the same as before; whether ticks received in his system are only active as long as you pay the monthly fee; etc. I think the key product direction here is that he wants to prioritize responses for paid customers, so he's going for some kind of "pay to play" model. It's not about the blue check really as much as seeing if enough people believe in getting "prominence" on the system. Ofc, it's BS that he talks of the old system as "lords vs peasants," when "pay to play" is pretty much exactly "lords (with money) over peasants." :) He just means, "power to money" when he says "power to people," which ofc runs 100% parallel with his libertarian ideologies so it's not a surprise that this coming from him. It won't change the Twitter that people use to connect with their specialized circles - like, if I follow a bunch of bicycling enthusiasts, or DnD players, or economics professors, etc. But if you are following some trending topic, like #Free<name of country> or whatever, you'll now see more tweets from paid accounts. Is that worse/better? I have no idea!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- abudabi123 4y ago
  There is a stage interview between Elon M. and R. Baron where the gist hinted at is the x.com plan from 22 years ago. The puzzle pieces that go well together in one triangle are Starlink, Twitter, SpaceX. Users will have the capability to set their Twitter comfy setting as they do for music, for example. I guess a better way to value the pieces in Telsa is to give each organ a different name like Neuralink. The Optimus bot has so much potential. It will revolutionize how the mess is made tidy after conventional arms conflict in small corners of the world where petsize animals were used to de-mine operations.
ecshafer 4y ago
I am probably not the only one that looked at a blue check mark and did not think legitimate or trustworthy. My view of blue check mark is someone that spends too much time on twitter.
jjeaff 4y ago
I believe one of the things that necessitated the verification was lawsuits from famous people being impersonated on Twitter. Now that you have to pay to be verified, seems like they might be open to that liability again.
- papito 4y ago
  Tony La Russa. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/twitter-verification-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/twitter-verification-e...

mackatap 4y ago

Anybody with a blog claiming to be a journalist could get verified, I saw plenty of verified accounts that were nobody scammers.

bandyaboot 4y ago
I’d be curious to see a couple examples.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
throw101010 4y ago
Some of these might also have been hacked blue checkmark accounts resold/reused. Which also was one of the issue with this status symbol, as far as I know the "verification" was a one time event per account.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
now they just need to be a nobody scammer who has $8/mo
- agentofoblivion 4y ago
  I think the point is that it’s hard to scale this. I’ve worked in the fraud space for awhile and a big problem is sophisticated actors that scale their operation and cause a lot of damage. If you can make it more expensive to scale, you can change the economics. For example, if it cost 1 cent to send an email, you would probably solve a big chunk of the spam problem.

sameers 4y ago

There's still a lot of confusion about what exactly this service entails. The Reuters article itself says, "It was not immediately clear how or if Twitter planned to verify the identity of the user beyond charging a fee." From the little I read of Musk's tweets, he isn't making clear if existing ticks will need payment to remain; whether ID verification will be the same as before; whether ticks received in his system are only active as long as you pay the monthly fee; etc. I think the key product direction here is that he wants to prioritize responses for paid customers, so he's going for some kind of "pay to play" model. It's not about the blue check really as much as seeing if enough people believe in getting "prominence" on the system. Ofc, it's BS that he talks of the old system as "lords vs peasants," when "pay to play" is pretty much exactly "lords (with money) over peasants." :) He just means, "power to money" when he says "power to people," which ofc runs 100% parallel with his libertarian ideologies so it's not a surprise that this coming from him. It won't change the Twitter that people use to connect with their specialized circles - like, if I follow a bunch of bicycling enthusiasts, or DnD players, or economics professors, etc. But if you are following some trending topic, like #Free<name of country> or whatever, you'll now see more tweets from paid accounts. Is that worse/better? I have no idea!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
abudabi123 4y ago
There is a stage interview between Elon M. and R. Baron where the gist hinted at is the x.com plan from 22 years ago. The puzzle pieces that go well together in one triangle are Starlink, Twitter, SpaceX. Users will have the capability to set their Twitter comfy setting as they do for music, for example. I guess a better way to value the pieces in Telsa is to give each organ a different name like Neuralink. The Optimus bot has so much potential. It will revolutionize how the mess is made tidy after conventional arms conflict in small corners of the world where petsize animals were used to de-mine operations.

ecshafer 4y ago

I am probably not the only one that looked at a blue check mark and did not think legitimate or trustworthy. My view of blue check mark is someone that spends too much time on twitter.

jjeaff 4y ago

I believe one of the things that necessitated the verification was lawsuits from famous people being impersonated on Twitter. Now that you have to pay to be verified, seems like they might be open to that liability again.

papito 4y ago
Tony La Russa. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/twitter-verification-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/twitter-verification-e...