If you’re not already aware, Elon Musk’s removal of Twitter’s legacy verifications has led to a shitstorm. The only accounts still verified on Twitter are people and organisations who have decided to pay to keep their checkmarks – well, that was supposed to be the case, but Elon is apparently giving checkmarks back to accounts with over a million followers, even the ones who definitely don’t want it. Of course, Twitter is still boosting replies and mentions from people who are Twitter Blue verified, which means our timelines are especially inundated with nonsense from people who think a blue tick means anything anymore.As a result, some unverified users have started a campaign called #BlockTheBlue, which encourages users to go through the verified tab and block anybody who has paid for Twitter Blue in an act of defiance against the company’s attempts to boost their tweets. To rub salt in the wound, Twitter Blue subscribers are also being made fun of by nearly everyone on the platform, and some are getting defensive – 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:including Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. Sweeney, an adult man who has billions of dollars, said people following through with #BlockTheBlue’s call to action aღre “losers and goons”, and that “They're the cool kids from junior high who worked to exclude we nerds from cool kid events, plus the losers who joined in to gain cred.” This is just another confirmation that Musk, and the people who pay for verification, have a fundamental misunderstanding of what verification🥂 is actually for.
Twitter verification isn’t about clout – it’s about preventing impersonation. And it’s not to protect its users as much as it is to protect the company from being sued by famous people who inevitably will get impersonated online. In fact, the system was introduced after baseball player Tony La Russa sued Twitter over fake accounts pretending to be him. The verification process involved reaching out to accounts that were “authentic, notable and active”, and checkmarks indicated Twitter had g🐻one through an actual verification process to confirm that the person was who they said they were.
For some reason, Sweeney believes that people denouncing the removal of an actual verification process makes them the equivalent of junior high school bullies, intentionally using it as a way to wall out non-elites. I find it astonishing that he believes turning a necessary safety measure into a purchasable commodity is “democratising it&rdq🌄uo;, and that he hasn’t considered the very real threats of people impersonating celebrities, politicians and companies. Twitter Blue doesn’t actually verify these people, as a Washington Post columnist proved. They which was only suspended after the story was published. In response to the actual senator tweeting about the article and asking for answers from Musk about how it was allowed to happen at all, Musk said,
That aside, it’s just very silly for a grown man, again, a multi-billionaire, to say with his entire chest on Twitter that a campaign to devalue a money-grab by a company&rsq🔥uo;s owner is about being cool or maintaining a position as part of the in-group. It’s not. Choosing to disavow #BlockTheBlue is basically saying you want to pay for the privilege of making content for Elon Musk. That’s his choice, but it’s ridiculous all around for him and others to think that Twitter is now ‘meritocratic’. The blue checkmark means nothing anymore. It has no value. Nothing has been democratised.
Anyway, Sweeney is getting ratioed nonstop on the thread he made, and for good reason. Verification wasn’t perfect, but it had a purpose and it served that purp💞ose. It helped to mitigate the rಞisk of disinformation and scams, and now there’s nothing. Thanks, Elon!