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Comments
inb4 Twitter itself adds ActivityPub compatibility just to stay relevant
Musk says the company is valued at $20B.
As a reminder, he bought it for $44B.
this is not very stonks
(breaking the link to prevent him from getting more views via embeds, but you can paste it in yourself)
Today at 7:54 PM
Keeping in mind that the actual-verification-based feature is being discontinued, this means only paying users can vote in polls.
Which...defeats the point of making polls, unless you're only interested in what Twitter subscribers specifically are thinking.
I guess he's still salty that people voted to tell him to get lost a while back.
That's not keeping people from deciding to forgo the new "verification" thing, which is basically just a paid Twitter subscription for attention.
That's @catturd2, a rather (in?)famous anonymous conservative commentator and Twitter personality who is one of the handful of accounts that Twitter has specifically been promoting. And not even he's happy with this lol
Meanwhile, Twitter is attempting to backpedal, offering verification for free to some people: https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/twitter-business-monthly-verified-status-fee-exempt-1235569966/
Of course, this just means it undercuts the whole idea of using this to get revenue...
This article also offers this one ironic bit:
https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
Someone then noted the following:
Today at 3:57 PM
The article also mentions that there's apparently still a grey checkmark for government officials but it's not clear who will have access to that.
This whole thing just continues to illustrate how trying to turn verification into a revenue stream basically just broke both ideas.
Like a generalized version of that thing where celebrities are the spokespersons of whatever.
Except for the New York Times, because Musk got mad at them specifically for not paying. https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-vengefully-kills-new-york-times-verified-twitter-checkmark
Though, even there, this wasn't even done thoroughly, as someone observed:
Anyhow, you still have both "legacy verified" and the "new" Twitter Blue things going around. And the site simply fails to differentiate between the two:
I get the feeling that the announcement that the blue checkmarks on Twitter would be discontinued basically followed the strategy of making a threat that those people who had it would lose verification status if they didn't pay up. This, however, assumes that "verification status" in the form of the blue checkmark icon is actually seen as valuable. Unfortunately, due to how Twitter has used it, that icon has been severely devalued over the past several months, to the point where many major organizations and celebrities can just get away with saying they won't pay for it. Without enough actually-verified people using it, it doesn't have an air of legitimacy, which means that Twitter/Musk can't sell the "verification" label effectively as a money-maker for the site either -- which seems to be the second piece they were going for.
So basically, the idea was:
1. The blue checkmark is considered valuable for people to show off, thanks to the legacy verification program.
2. People will be attracted to buy it because the social value of it would rub off on them.
Both parts of this are falling apart lol.
(Let's not even consider the issue that this is basically an attempt to create an officially-sanctioned scam of sorts, where you can buy your way into making yourself look important by carrying a thing that other, important people have.)
And I guess it's my turn to have a realization thanks to someone else on here. Now it's time for @lrdgck to say something that causes you to have a realization, haha.
(I can't say how epiphanic this is, but I will point out I made no promises.)
Meanwhile...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2023/04/05/germany-threatens-twitter-with-50m-fine-for-failing-to-tackle-illegal-content/amp/
Basically it's getting fined for letting people use the site to post Nazi shit.
Someone pointed out that this is a small fine...because it's only four times the amount that Twitter earned from Twitter Blue subscriptions.
And this is why you should be more careful with salacious images.
...due to its "exorbitant API pricing".
N.B. Intercom is a company that helps other companies do customer support, and its clients "span many industries and include companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Udemy, and H&R Block using its customer support products and services."
Except then Twitter then re-implemented checkmarks for some celebs, such as Lebron James. For free.
Then regular users complained that celebs were getting them for free while they had to pay for theirs.
I think someone is still big mad at NPR leaving.
But, hey, if he wants to destroy the Twitter userbase to spite NPR...go ahead I guess.
I find it weird when people assume they are as important as Important People. I mean yeah, you can become an Important Person via your activities online, but it's obvious why certain people would get advantages you don't.
In what direction?
Anyways certain tweets as of late seem to be getting more prominent, especially anti-Jewish stuff and some anti-gay stuff that was being blanket nuked along with other 'anti-LGBT' stuff under old policies.
I feel like we're just a bit off a timeline where even Elon realizes you actually can't just let people say anything, because even I have realized this after seeing the third image macro of a smug Jewish soyjack sending immigrants in on a conveyor belt that then "mixes" the previously pureblood races.
Then again I recently found the obviously nonce part of gay twitter and that's running terrifyingly strong so maybe no problems get solved.Now I wonder how smug gacek feels about his obviously prophetic "{can't remember the term now} zeal" post from a while backngl though the US racial crime statposting is kind of giving me life.
Erdogan is a rightie populist dick running for yet another term against a coalition of liberal and left parties, so I figured it's kind of obvious by now who Muskie would side with. Here's a linky to an article on the topic: https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-censorship-elon-musk-throttled-tweets-turkey-presidential-election-2023-5?amp=
I've heard the "race realists" (or whatever the righties consider the politically correct term for a Neo-Nazi-lite these days) are already disappointed in him, so, yeah, that's possible. The funny thing though is that it would mean he paid all that money and squandered his public persona for a chance to make a big circle.
I believe the proper term is "Happy Merchant", unless it's specifically a variant form using a Wojak derivative.
Neophyte's zeal, also not really as much as you'd expect, really.
It does make sense that celebs might need certain things such as privacy protections in ways that non-celebs don't, yeah. But my point there was about the consequences of Musk trying to make Twitter Blue a verification-for-pay scheme without the verification but with the intent to turn it into a significant revenue stream.
Pre-Musk Twitter's verification process made much more sense. Famous people would more likely be the target of impersonation so they'd get officially verified by Twitter staff. And the verified label was of value to everyone -- famous people, so they can actually be more in control of their social media presence; other Twitter users, so that they can more practically verify the information they see online; and the platform as a whole, because it's seen as a more trustworthy source of information.
Musk's changes to Twitter Blue tried to lean on the the verification label as a desirable badge of social honor in order to sell it, but without verification, and especially at the speed at which he let it decay, he basically destroyed the social value of the label, because people no longer see it as an indicator of trustworthiness that it used to be.
I had heard from some folks recently that, in part due to the lack of content moderation on Twitter these days, you could search up "cat" or "dog" and get some very nasty animal abuse pictures quite easily.
As for the Turkish election thing: from what I understand, Twitter censored stuff on request of the Turkish government, and ironically Musk actually had a vaguely sensible reply to people complaining that he wasn't supporting free speech -- he said he'd rather let some speech get through than none at all (if Twitter as whole got blocked). That said, I heard that Jimbo Wales (of Wikipedia fame) took him to task there, pointing out that Wikipedia actually sued the Turkish government over such restrictions, in Turkish courts, and won.
As for Musk getting flak from right-wingers, I heard that his new choice of CEO (I'm pretty sure he's still gonna own the company though so it's not even like it'd be much of a change) was getting flak from (the political) left and right -- with leftists/liberals complaining about her following a bunch of right-wing accounts, and right-wingers complaining that she once headed NBC Universal, or something like that.
Well there was an NYT article about it but I was too lazy to read it but going by the fact that it was an NYT article, I guessed it would be in this direction.
Nah that's probably it.
Yeah I remembered about 30m ago (which is why I logged on just now).
Elon Musk has been good at those since before he became the guy for it.
Presumably Wikipedia had a decent timeline and forethought on that, and Twitter ran into a day-of problem that needed a quick fix.
My dear, innocent GMH.
You have no idea how mouth-foamy "associated with the WEF" makes well... RW conspiracy minded people on twitter (and wherever) melt-down. It is insane what is happening right now with respect to that (but in a funny* way, if you know where to look).
*read: sad.
Funny how that turns out to have been necessary.
There are about 3 major identifiable things that are better now, but it feels like as a result about 7000 or so things have gotten worse.
Twitter now allows Twitter Blue subscribers to upload 2-hour long videos.
Given that YouTube already exists and has a better user interface for watching and keeping track of videos, this seems pretty pointless...except for use cases where you don't want the videos to be easily kept track of.
By which I mean that someone already had fun.
Twitter•Today at 11:18 AM
The manosphere needs help (and about 10% of them just need to sleep with a guy and get it over with).