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Unfortunately that’s how I’m beginning to see this too, a sign of old school nepotism and struggle to regain lost status. We’ve seen how this unfolded for Twitt

Unfortunately that’s how I’m beginning to see this too, a sign of old school nepotism and struggle to regain lost status. We’ve seen how this unfolded for Twitter.

LastTrain 1y ago
How did that unfold on Twitter? I thought they did it better than anybody before the takeover but maybe I’m missing something.
- FlyingSnake 1y ago
  It started well with good intentions and the initial rollout solved the problem. It then turned into a status symbol and hidden caste system. When Elon took over and turned it into a game, all cred was lost.
  - azernik 1y ago
    It was a "hidden caste system" with no real consequences for people's interaction with the platform. I have approximately zero sympathy with the "anti-bluecheck" resentments that Musk tapped into.
  - IMTDb 1y ago
    When Elon took over; the rules were clearly laid out: buy your checkmark for $7/month (not sure of the price). Pay and you get it; stop paying and you loose it. Everybody knows exactly what it means. Before that it was: "Someone will give you the checkmark if they like what you say enough and/or if you are deemed 'popular enough' according to an obscure committee; likely a combination of both. But there is a certain threshold above which it does not matter what you way, and you will always be verified". You could loose your checkmark on the whim of some dude who got his latte order wrong in the morning. No one was ever given the rulebook. In fact there was no rulebook. Checkmark just meant "I went to a bar with a Twitter employee and we agreed on a lot of things". The same thing will happen to Bluesky. The system is akin to how CA and SSL does work with a critical difference. To get an SSL certificate, there is a clear step-by-step guide on how to get it. And after it has been granted it isn't revoked regardless of wether DigiCert agrees with the content of your website.
    - notwhereyouare 1y ago
      >When Elon took over; the rules were clearly laid out: buy your checkmark for $7/month (not sure of the price). Pay and you get it; stop paying and you loose it. Everybody knows exactly what it means. except then he was also randomly giving out checkmarks to people who didn't want them and specifically told him to remove them
- xnorswap 1y ago
  Even before the takeover accounts could be "unverified", which makes a mockery of the concept of verification. Verification should always have been "This is who they say they are", not an endorsement. The "algorithm" boosting tweets from verified accounts also showed it was an endorsement rather than verification. When people lost verification for being distasteful, it reinforced the blue checkmark as being an endorsement. The takeover sold-out the "value" build up from blue checkmarks by just straight up selling them. It explicitly made the platform "Pay for reach".
  - dfxm12 1y ago
    Even before the takeover accounts could be "unverified", which makes a mockery of the concept of verification. Why? Accounts can be sold/hacked, and there is a lot of that on social media. A verified account may even be a higher value target for some of the reasons you're bringing up, like algorithm boosts, verifications being considered an endorsement. In either case, unverification not only makes sense, but should be expected.
    - xnorswap 1y ago
      I knew a pedant would get me on that. I'm talking about people, who are still verifiably the same people, becoming unverified. Yes, where accounts have changed hands, or changed identity, they should be unverified. That's actually one of the cases where twitter did not un-verify. Accounts "earned" the blue-check then changed identity to something else, appearing "verified" as that new identity.
      - dfxm12 1y ago
        If that's what you were talking about, you should have said that. Accounts are not people. This is not pedantry (and calling me names doesn't prove anything, either).
        xnorswap 1y ago
        I did say that, it's the very next line: > Verification should always have been "This is who they say they are", not an endorsement
- noirscape 1y ago
  There's a pretty good retrospective written up on this blog[0]. In short: originally the purpose was nothing more "this account belongs to the person they claim to be and we've directly verified this with them". Unfortunately, people habitually misinterpreted the checkmark as not just being verification but also a tacit endorsement of the account by Twitter the company. Which isn't great when you get a high profile controversial event and it's lead organizer has a verified Twitter account. After that, they appended an "in good standing" qualifier, and it quickly devolved into a "you know a person who knows a person who knows a person" situation since they also announced a public pause of the program. (Notably, the ID check, while it existed, was pretty much abandoned. Twitter at some point began demanding ID scans to report things to their support, but that obviously never actually translated to a blue check.) Musk's version of it is hilariously simplistic, but also robs it of any and all value: just pay money for it and you'll get it. It works in the sense that it confirms the poster has a bank account (although this probably doesn't confirm much in and of itself), but any and all value of said verification is minimal because any old hack/scammer can do that. Verification is a difficult system to get right and people have all sorts of pre-baked in ideas on how it should work versus how it actually works and the use of a checkmark played a part into how Twitters version was perceived over the years. (As well as Twitters own unreliability in being consistent about what it means.) [0]: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/11/01/the-failure-of-account-verification/ https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/11/01/the-failure-of-acco...
  - 6510 1y ago
    It does prevent one from creating thousands such accounts per minute.
- whywhywhywhy 1y ago
  Huge swathe of accounts who got in early and had friends at Twitter got verified and had priority standing in algorithms and moderator reports just based on that not on the merit of their posts. Oh you could also pay Twitter employees $20K under the table to be verified too.
idiotsecant 1y ago
Do you have a better proposal for preventing spam and scam accounts from impersonating users that a lot of people pay attention to?
- FlyingSnake 1y ago
  In my humble opinion: The basic premise is itself is wrong. Why should BlueSky (or X or Mastodon) should be the sole arbitrator of truth? Who are these prophets that we need to preserve the sanctity of their messages? If I want to hear what a journalist has to say, I would go to their official website like NYT or Tagesspeigel and read it there. Should we be interested in what Kim Sang yun or Sebastian Mustermann has said few minutes ago? The problem of spam and impersonation goes way beyond Blue Checks.
  - brookst 1y ago
    Are you saying that the problems of spam and impersonation are so insurmountable that there’s no point trying to mitigate them?
    - pc86 1y ago
      They definitely did not say that and what is this constant need for people on the internet to respond to someone saying "maybe this isn't the right way to do something" with "Oh well then you're saying that something can't be done at all and it's pointless and why even try!!!11"
  - maxerickson 1y ago
    In this case, they aren't the sole arbiter. They do happen to be the one that their client is advertising, but they can add others. You are borderline arguing that information is bad (because that's all a verification is).
    - FlyingSnake 1y ago
      > You are borderline arguing that information is bad Your words not mine. I questioned why sites like X or BlueSky or Reddit can be sole in charge of who is "verified" and Real™. We can listen to what the Journalists, UN officials etc have to say on their own media websites, right? Too much news is bad for us anyway [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054

Unfortunately that’s how I’m beginning to see this too, a sign of old school nepotism and struggle to regain lost status. We’ve seen how this unfolded for Twitter.

LastTrain 1y ago

How did that unfold on Twitter? I thought they did it better than anybody before the takeover but maybe I’m missing something.

FlyingSnake 1y ago
It started well with good intentions and the initial rollout solved the problem. It then turned into a status symbol and hidden caste system. When Elon took over and turned it into a game, all cred was lost.
- azernik 1y ago
  It was a "hidden caste system" with no real consequences for people's interaction with the platform. I have approximately zero sympathy with the "anti-bluecheck" resentments that Musk tapped into.
- IMTDb 1y ago
  When Elon took over; the rules were clearly laid out: buy your checkmark for $7/month (not sure of the price). Pay and you get it; stop paying and you loose it. Everybody knows exactly what it means. Before that it was: "Someone will give you the checkmark if they like what you say enough and/or if you are deemed 'popular enough' according to an obscure committee; likely a combination of both. But there is a certain threshold above which it does not matter what you way, and you will always be verified". You could loose your checkmark on the whim of some dude who got his latte order wrong in the morning. No one was ever given the rulebook. In fact there was no rulebook. Checkmark just meant "I went to a bar with a Twitter employee and we agreed on a lot of things". The same thing will happen to Bluesky. The system is akin to how CA and SSL does work with a critical difference. To get an SSL certificate, there is a clear step-by-step guide on how to get it. And after it has been granted it isn't revoked regardless of wether DigiCert agrees with the content of your website.
  - notwhereyouare 1y ago
    >When Elon took over; the rules were clearly laid out: buy your checkmark for $7/month (not sure of the price). Pay and you get it; stop paying and you loose it. Everybody knows exactly what it means. except then he was also randomly giving out checkmarks to people who didn't want them and specifically told him to remove them
xnorswap 1y ago
Even before the takeover accounts could be "unverified", which makes a mockery of the concept of verification. Verification should always have been "This is who they say they are", not an endorsement. The "algorithm" boosting tweets from verified accounts also showed it was an endorsement rather than verification. When people lost verification for being distasteful, it reinforced the blue checkmark as being an endorsement. The takeover sold-out the "value" build up from blue checkmarks by just straight up selling them. It explicitly made the platform "Pay for reach".
- dfxm12 1y ago
  Even before the takeover accounts could be "unverified", which makes a mockery of the concept of verification. Why? Accounts can be sold/hacked, and there is a lot of that on social media. A verified account may even be a higher value target for some of the reasons you're bringing up, like algorithm boosts, verifications being considered an endorsement. In either case, unverification not only makes sense, but should be expected.
  - xnorswap 1y ago
    I knew a pedant would get me on that. I'm talking about people, who are still verifiably the same people, becoming unverified. Yes, where accounts have changed hands, or changed identity, they should be unverified. That's actually one of the cases where twitter did not un-verify. Accounts "earned" the blue-check then changed identity to something else, appearing "verified" as that new identity.
    - dfxm12 1y ago
      If that's what you were talking about, you should have said that. Accounts are not people. This is not pedantry (and calling me names doesn't prove anything, either).
      - xnorswap 1y ago
        I did say that, it's the very next line: > Verification should always have been "This is who they say they are", not an endorsement
noirscape 1y ago
There's a pretty good retrospective written up on this blog[0]. In short: originally the purpose was nothing more "this account belongs to the person they claim to be and we've directly verified this with them". Unfortunately, people habitually misinterpreted the checkmark as not just being verification but also a tacit endorsement of the account by Twitter the company. Which isn't great when you get a high profile controversial event and it's lead organizer has a verified Twitter account. After that, they appended an "in good standing" qualifier, and it quickly devolved into a "you know a person who knows a person who knows a person" situation since they also announced a public pause of the program. (Notably, the ID check, while it existed, was pretty much abandoned. Twitter at some point began demanding ID scans to report things to their support, but that obviously never actually translated to a blue check.) Musk's version of it is hilariously simplistic, but also robs it of any and all value: just pay money for it and you'll get it. It works in the sense that it confirms the poster has a bank account (although this probably doesn't confirm much in and of itself), but any and all value of said verification is minimal because any old hack/scammer can do that. Verification is a difficult system to get right and people have all sorts of pre-baked in ideas on how it should work versus how it actually works and the use of a checkmark played a part into how Twitters version was perceived over the years. (As well as Twitters own unreliability in being consistent about what it means.) [0]: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/11/01/the-failure-of-account-verification/ https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/11/01/the-failure-of-acco...
- 6510 1y ago
  It does prevent one from creating thousands such accounts per minute.
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
Huge swathe of accounts who got in early and had friends at Twitter got verified and had priority standing in algorithms and moderator reports just based on that not on the merit of their posts. Oh you could also pay Twitter employees $20K under the table to be verified too.

idiotsecant 1y ago

Do you have a better proposal for preventing spam and scam accounts from impersonating users that a lot of people pay attention to?

FlyingSnake 1y ago
In my humble opinion: The basic premise is itself is wrong. Why should BlueSky (or X or Mastodon) should be the sole arbitrator of truth? Who are these prophets that we need to preserve the sanctity of their messages? If I want to hear what a journalist has to say, I would go to their official website like NYT or Tagesspeigel and read it there. Should we be interested in what Kim Sang yun or Sebastian Mustermann has said few minutes ago? The problem of spam and impersonation goes way beyond Blue Checks.
- brookst 1y ago
  Are you saying that the problems of spam and impersonation are so insurmountable that there’s no point trying to mitigate them?
  - pc86 1y ago
    They definitely did not say that and what is this constant need for people on the internet to respond to someone saying "maybe this isn't the right way to do something" with "Oh well then you're saying that something can't be done at all and it's pointless and why even try!!!11"
- maxerickson 1y ago
  In this case, they aren't the sole arbiter. They do happen to be the one that their client is advertising, but they can add others. You are borderline arguing that information is bad (because that's all a verification is).
  - FlyingSnake 1y ago
    > You are borderline arguing that information is bad Your words not mine. I questioned why sites like X or BlueSky or Reddit can be sole in charge of who is "verified" and Real™. We can listen to what the Journalists, UN officials etc have to say on their own media websites, right? Too much news is bad for us anyway [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054