I actually applaud Musk for realizing that just selling ads & data won't make Twitter sustainable. And yes, the blue checkmark verification process may have been problematically elitist and arbitrary in the past.
But the new blue/gold checkmarks system only intensifies these problems, and it creates more of them:
Blue checkmarks have now become completely meaningless with regards to account authenticity. Keeping them "blue" only serves to fool and confuse people who still believe in their old meaning and status, which is a shady business practice.
For an actual verification process (the gold checkmark), one has to pay $ 1000, which is very elitist, if not arbitrary.
What I think would have made much more sense: providing a strong identity verification process for those who pay the $ 8/mo. Not immediately granting them the blue checkmark. And for the sake of consistency, formalising that accounts with more than 1 million followers get the process for free. At least then the checkmarks would have still meant something.
I do remember! Some watered down version of Scroll was integrated into Twitter Blue, but it seems to have been stripped out last November. I’m not sure if Scroll itself had good business prospects before being acquired, but I can’t imagine that this is the ending they had hoped for…
I actually applaud Musk for realizing that just selling ads & data won't make Twitter sustainable. And yes, the blue checkmark verification process may have been problematically elitist and arbitrary in the past.
But the new blue/gold checkmarks system only intensifies these problems, and it creates more of them:
What I think would have made much more sense: providing a strong identity verification process for those who pay the $ 8/mo. Not immediately granting them the blue checkmark. And for the sake of consistency, formalising that accounts with more than 1 million followers get the process for free. At least then the checkmarks would have still meant something.
Twitter was working on some sort of subscription service for years. There could still be hope for Twitter Blue I guess, if the company survives long enough.
I do remember! Some watered down version of Scroll was integrated into Twitter Blue, but it seems to have been stripped out last November. I’m not sure if Scroll itself had good business prospects before being acquired, but I can’t imagine that this is the ending they had hoped for…