Twitter for iOS Updated With New $8 Subscription Offering Verification and More [Updated: Not Yet Live]

[Sciomar]

Some of y'all need to stop putting people up on pedestals who don't deserve to be there. These crying "elites" are hilarious, if the rumors on how verification happened are true, they got scammed by a corrupt group of employees. Elon is cleaning house and making some good changes. I don't drink chain coffee so I have extra money for a sub. It's a shame that certain groups are trying to do everything they can to make the ship sink, turns out these groups don't like regulars having the same access...who would've guessed.

(edited because some words are hard for the MR children)

 

[Canyda]

The question that should be asked is why people and the mainstream news media are treating random tweets as facts and news in the first place. The journalists are supposed to do journalism work, not just quoting tweets verbatim and call it a day. Blame it on lazy journalism, not Twitter.

As a former journalist, I'm ridiculously thankful that Twitter didn't exist when I was in the business. Twitter has been TERRIBLE for journalism. It's completely exposed (what was always a myth, to be fair) that journalists are "balanced" in their coverage when you saw journos out there on Twitter every day always ripping on political figures in highly partisan ways. Why, if I were a business person or politician, talk to any journalist that just spent their whole day crapping on me or my business or my colleagues?

And Twitter has devolved journalism into the laziest form of, "We're working on a story about X and would like to speak to people affected by X, our DMs are open." Yeah, nothing like the 10% of the population on Twitter gets to be 100% of the sources for your stories.

Honestly, Musk and Twitter can be mutually assured destruction for all I care. He's a goof, and Twitter is a cancer.

 

[maccymac42]

Ok? I've seen various YouTubers with big followings without a checkmark, same with small indie game teams, developers, modelers, etc.

Exactly. It's an uneven system that's now even more uneven because it just shows you pay. It does not mean the person is verified as a real person. People suggesting folk were faking it before are going to hate it now.

 

[maccymac42]

I've heard rumors that some users that applied for a checkmark got declined, then messaged by a Twitter employee to cough up $15k just to have a checkmark near their name. Not sure if it's true or not, but that could explain one of the few reasons why verified people are complaining.

Anecdotal nonsense. My milkman's friend son's cat's original owner said blah blah blah.

 

[maccymac42]

Some of y'all need to stop putting people up on pedestals who don't deserve to be there. These crying "elites" are hilarious, if the rumors on how verification happened are true, they got scammed by a corrupt group of employees. Elon is cleaning house and making some good changes. I don't drink chain coffee so I can use that money for a sub. It's a shame that certain groups are trying to do everything they can to make the ship sink, turns out these groups don't like regulars having the same access...who would've guessed.

You don't drink 'chain coffee' (lol) but budget for it anyway? Wut?

"these groups don't like regulars having the same access...who would've guessed"

Only folk like you are saying this. Verified people do not care whether others are verified, they just know this won't fix any of the problems Elon is trying to fix. It's not about 'access', that's ridiculous thinking. But then, I'd expect nothing less from a wish.com Justin Hammer supporter.

 

[maccymac42]

But it will be obvious they are impersonating somebody because they will need a verified payment method, billing address and name.

People viewing their profile don't see that, and Twitter doesn't need the name on your card, address etc to match your account. Not so obvious at all.

 

[Techwatcher]

El-No.

Twitter is over.

It's just taken a while for most to realize this.

So leave tf lol I’ll be staying. And don’t group “most of us” with you.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

To Twitter, yes it'd be obvious. So once someone notices and reports the impersonation, then they could ban the offender quickly, provided they have enough staff. But someone reading through Twitter posts might not notice, and they could fall for scam or misinformation.

Only if you also assume there will be no other badges or indication of authenticity on the accounts of notable people or public figures.

Early indications are that there will be.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1588154661139365888

 

[nt5672]

Not even a verification process behind it? What if I rename my Twitter to Angela. Merkel? People are stupid, I am sure there would be heaps of people falling for trolls

But trolls that pay. That is a big difference.

 

[mrat93]

You don't drink 'chain coffee' (lol) but budget for it anyway? Wut?

Elon tweeted this a few days ago so now it’s Elon fans’ only joke for the next 6 months.

 

[Night Spring]

Only if you also assume there will be no other badges or indication of authenticity on the accounts of notable people or public figures.

Early indications are that there will be.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1588154661139365888

Then this new "notable" indication will become the new elite signifier, and things will be right back where they are now.

 

[TallManNY]

The point is that I’m with the sit back and observe crowd (“pass the popcorn”, reference to earlier comments in this thread). . . . and place my chips on the “fail” marker for his Twitter leadership, evidenced by his hyper-loop debacle, promised passenger flights to Mars by 2025, alarm in the scientific community over excessive satellite space junk which will ruin the lower atmosphere, etc etc. Yeah, so Musk hit paydirt with PayPal. But there is a snake oil side here too . . .

Definitely a ton of snake oil and basically random stuff that Musk says. Lot of bull. But Musk has more than just PayPal as a success. Tesla has 70% of the US battery electric vehicle market and it is pretty clear that much or maybe most of the passenger vehicle market is going to be BEVs in fairly short order. That is a stunning accomplishment. Tesla also makes one of the best battery storage systems (both their version for home use and for utility scale use). This is another extremely high growth area and it is impressive to have an extremely strong position in it.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Then this new "notable" indication will become the new elite signifier, and things will be right back where they are now.

Who cares about anything being an 'elite signifier' that is not the problem that paid verification is trying to solve.

The verification process is aimed at reducing the number and impact of sock puppeting and bot armies on the platform.

 

[1557750]

There’s a new article out now. Everyone can move past this thread. 👊😎👊

 

[Skyscraperfan]

I wonder if early adopters of the $7.99 scheme could profit a lot. If their tweets are amplified, they might get a huge follower boost, as long as there only is a small member of people who are willing to pay $7.99 per month.

Something I posted yesterday for example got more than 700 likes. A while ago on of my tweets go thousands of likes and even over 1,000 retweets, although I only have a few followers and no Twitter Blue. I wonder how much in such a situation the boost would have brought.

So I think about if it would be worth to spend those $7.99 for a few months. If that brings a lot of followers, there are ways to monetize those and earn much more than $7.99 per month. If Twitter Blue does not bring a boost in following, I could cancel it after three months or so. Then I would have spend $23.97 on an experiment.

 

[bobcomer]

You may be more on the money than you realise. $8 gets you a peasants blue tick. $10 gets you a prestige purple tick. $20 gets you an “ elite “ gold tick.

True, it'll probably happen.

 

[TallManNY]

The blue tick will now cost $8 and have $0 value, as now anybody can get verified, including copycat accounts. Well done! 👏

And he also just fired so many people I'm not sure there are enough staff left to find and ban all the impersonators.

And the real problem isn't all the people pretending to be Elon Musk or Beyoncé. It's people pretending to be the local board of elections and giving the wrong polling location info. Or people pretending to be the Education Department and posting a link to a site to apply for student loan forgiveness, thereby fooling people into giving up their personal information. Sure, such accounts will eventually be found and banned, but the damage would be done by then.

How do you think you pay the $8? I will help, you need to use a credit card. The credit card gets processed with the name attached to it. If the credit card runs through, then you get the blue check. Will some organization use a stolen credit card to create one account of the sort you suggest? Sure. Will this be something that happens at large scale as compared to bots that are made nearly instantly today? Nope.

It will be interesting to see what happens. But for the vast majority of verified folks and companies who use twitter regularly to post and engage, I think they will just pay the $8 going forward and never really notice the $8 charge on their credit card.

 

[Skyscraperfan]

So only credit cards will be allowed? No PayPal although Elon Musk founded PayPal?

 

[Night Spring]

Who cares about anything being an 'elite signifier' that is not the problem that paid verification is trying to solve.

The verification process is aimed at reducing the number and impact of sock puppeting and bot armies on the platform.

I don't have a problem with elite signifiers, but a lot of people seem to think the current blue badge system creates a group of privileged elites who look down on others. Elon Musk himself seems to buy into such views.

As I've been saying, making everyone pay $8 to get a check mark wouldn't completely prevent the problem of sock puppeting. It may make it easier to police it when it happens, but it'll make it easier to momentarily fool people. Unless, as you suggest, they create another identifier that marks notable accounts. Now you have a more complex system than you started with, that does essentially the same thing as the old system.

Whether this pay-to-verify system will help with bots? It might, or maybe some billionaire could create an army of bot accounts and pay the $8/month for all of them. We'll see how that goes.

 

[rileyes]

Bye, bird. You've been captured and turned into a vulture.

The lack of rational criticism has been funny to watch. They haven't yet changed anything about their moderation policies. Twitter was already planning to do layoffs before Musk made his takeover bid, but as part of the transaction they were no longer allowed to make any significant changes to the company during that time. Twitter Blue already existed as a paid add-on, and they had already largely paused their process of granting verification blue checks because they themselves had said the process needed to be revamped, that it was too arbritary and lacked transparency. So, if you have complaints about Twitter, they happened long before Musk took over. Sounds more like you're just making emotional statements because you don't like Musk.

 

[fishkorp]

How do you think you pay the $8? I will help, you need to use a credit card. The credit card gets processed with the name attached to it. If the credit card runs through, then you get the blue check. Will some organization use a stolen credit card to create one account of the sort you suggest? Sure. Will this be something that happens at large scale as compared to bots that are made nearly instantly today? Nope.

It will be interesting to see what happens. But for the vast majority of verified folks and companies who use twitter regularly to post and engage, I think they will just pay the $8 going forward and never really notice the $8 charge on their credit card.

It’s an in app purchase. They have none of that information if you don’t want them to.

 

[fishkorp]

Not sure if really tons of money is need not run Twitter. The servers will cost a lot of money, but I think that Wikipedia has much higher server costs and that runs without ads just by donations.

Maybe having an uncensored platform might be worth more than the money for Elon Musk. He does not need his investment back. Instead he just want the daily costs covered. $4 million loss per day already seems very small. It should be possible to compensate those losses by costs cuts.

His long term goal is building a platform which can also used for payments. If he already has the payments details of the heavy Twitter users for the $7.99 per month, it will be much easier to convince people to use Twitter as a payment platform like WeChat.

That’s not his long term plan. He has no long term plan. He never wanted to buy it in the first place. He got caught wanting to pump n dump stock. And instead of going to trial he decides to just buy it. The $44B was worth it to not not expose whatever was going to come out at that trial. If he thought he was in the right, he would have went through with the trial. His lawyers knew he was screened. And now he’s driving it into the ground. On purpose most likely.

 

[mike5000]

I’ll pass. You can’t competently run Twitter with half of its workforce fired.

Anyone who has ever worked anywhere knows that half of the staff is useless, 80% if you like the 80/20 rule. 99% if you believe the top 1% of engineers are hundreds of times more productive than the average engineer.

 

[bokdol]

watching formenr elon simp saying no to their king's price is hilarrious.

 

[A MacBook lover]

People really act like $8/month for a digital service is a ton of money.

People pay like $20(?)/month for extra features on dating apps..

People spend $100’s on virtual outfits and avatars in video games..

Some people even pay for Apple TV..

Bruh, dating apps are like $34.99 and you get like 10 likes a day if you’re free.