Twitter launches $8 monthly subscription with blue checkmark

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-launches-8-monthly-subscription-with-blue-checkmark-2022-11-05/

by mfiguiere • 4 years ago

30 24 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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

bandyaboot• 4 years ago

I’d be curious to see a couple examples.

throw101010• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

now they just need to be a nobody scammer who has $8/mo

sameers• 4 years 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!

abudabi123• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Tony La Russa.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/twitter-verification-e...

ALittleLight3• 4 years ago

Move fast and break things. I'm very interested to learn whether this approach will turn out well or not.

fortyseven• 4 years ago

In this case it's more like "warp fast and breach the core".

ALittleLight3• 4 years ago

Whatever happens I feel like it'll be a big learning experience. I really have no idea what to expect - maybe Twitter does great and Elon's selling at profit in 3-5 years, maybe Twitter spins apart and breaks down horribly within a year, maybe the service works about the same but with some new features. I just really have no idea how to even assign likelihood between those three possibilities, I kind of think the last is most likely, but no idea. This is like running an experiment when you have no idea what the outcome will be. It's exciting!

cweagans• 4 years ago

More like "move things and break fast", I think.

dt3ft• 4 years ago

Why is reuters even reporting on this? Why is this even considered newsworthy?

drstewart• 4 years ago

Being intentionally obtuse is transparent

strawhatguy2• 4 years ago

Because twitter used to be the special domain of journalists. And while they can do the same sh*t now as before, it’s like they feel they lost status.

So they do what they do: write about it.

nikolay• 4 years ago

I don't see this option - maybe because I'm still on $2.99 with not blue checkmark and no option to upgrade.

jshzglr• 4 years ago

I'm a fan of Elon and am optimistic on Twitter's future, but this is not compelling whatsoever. The fact that I pay $8 a month and still see ads is enough to make this a non-starter.

Twitter launches $8 monthly subscription with blue checkmark

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