> I’ve written about the platform’s array of issues before, but, in summary, the removal of the verified public figures and the introduction of the new Blue Tic

> I’ve written about the platform’s array of issues before, but, in summary, the removal of the verified public figures and the introduction of the new Blue Ticks basically allowed people to pay for engagement. I think the alternative was worse. Basically unseen employees at Twitter get to make judgement calls on who is noteworthy, with not much objective reasoning. I've seen people with 1k followers have a blue checkmark and then others with hundreds of thousands of followers not have one. And you even had instances where blue check marks were removed as punishment. The only reasoning that made sense was politics, if you were a left wing author with a self published book of poems and 1k followers you had a good shot at a checkmark, and if you were right wing, you would have that check mark dangled over you. No clear process. And considering how influential these social media platforms are and how checkmarks effect discoverability, it made a huge difference. Instagram had the same thing and there were even stories of "influencers" sleeping with Meta employees to get verified. Now anyone willing to pay a few dollars per month can have the same reach. There's a reason Instagram basically has this pay to play model and I think it's far better. Also the fact that Twitter is the only (?) social media that pays its creators directly. No convoluted process, just if you're verified you get a check every once in a while and from what I've seen it's pretty substantial. The idea that social media companies should pay their creators has been around a while. It seemed deeply unfair that these billion dollar companies were created on the back of free labor. Reddit had worthless "gold" as a reward, but come on. This was a huge long overdue development in social media landscape that I don't think gets enough attention.