Apparently, the forced bluechecking will continue until the culture on ExTwitter improves.
Providing a bit more confirmation to the theory that Elon’s recent decision to give free “Premium” accounts to basically anyone with a half-decent follower base was about his realization that only the absolute worst people were willing to pay for Twitter Blue, Twitter Premium, X Premium, Elon is no longer letting users hide their blue check.
Elon had previously done away with handing out verification (which had been separate from Twitter’s premium subscription offering), claiming that it was an unfair system of “lords and peasants,” and kept insisting that the only way to get a bluecheck (which he incorrectly thought was valuable) was to pay $8 (or more) a month.
He has been trying to add more “features” to those who subscribe to entice more than the chud brigade to pay up. This includes having their replies appear on top of everyone else’s, access to his weak also-ran AI system, and a few other things. But it hasn’t worked. A while back, he started handing out free “Premium” accounts to big stars (the beginning of the return of lords and peasants) even if they didn’t want them.
Apparently recognizing that many users didn’t want to set fire to their reputation by admitting they were paying for what ExTwitter had become, the site did allow users who were gifted a bluecheck to hide it. That feature was rolled out last summer. It appears that too many people were using it, which appears to have ruined the whole reason Elon was giving out bluechecks. Indeed, his actions suggested that he knew that the worst thing for some people’s reputations was for people to believe they were giving money to Elon Musk.
And then, a couple weeks ago he took it to a new level, giving a free Premium account to anyone with more than 2,500 followers who also have premium accounts.
And suddenly, the lords and peasants system was back from the grave — though in a dumber, less workable fashion. But it wouldn’t accomplish the need of (1) pretending that the people who users actually cared about were willing to pay Musk, and (2) no longer hiding the replies and tweets from those users that users actually cared about, and forcibly shoving idiot chud content into their feed instead if those users given the free bluechecks could hide them.
Thus, that feature is disappearing. If Elon anoints you “a lord” of ExTwitter, goshdarnit, users are going to see that you’re a “lord” of ExTwitter, whether you like it or not.
Let me translate: “we can’t admit we fucked up, but here’s a message confirming we royally fucked up.”
The hide your checkmark feature of X Premium is going away soon. Tap to manage your X Premium features.
So, we’re now back to lords and peasants where Elon gets to pick and choose who gets a free bluecheck, while suckers who can’t get popular enough on their own can buy their way in.
But, of course, all this does is underline what a complete disaster Musk’s leadership has been here. The company had a really interesting program for premium features (but under-promoted, under-explained). It also had a problematic, but functional, verification program that was never meant to be a status symbol, but rather a way to protect well-known users from impersonation.
Every one of Musk’s assumptions appears to have been wrong. The idea that the blue checkmarks were what was valuable was wrong (nope, when you changed the program, you devalued them massively). The idea that popular users would feel compelled to pay up to keep the bluechecks was wrong (nope, and in fact, many of them were happy to be rid of the buggers). The idea that making people pay for bluechecks and then prioritizing their content would stop spammers rather than (as actually happened), making it way easier for spammers to look marginally legit, by buying their way to “credibility” with Musk’s minions.
This latest move seems like the closest we’ll get to an admission that Musk fucked up. But, it really demonstrates just how desperate things have become that Musk is now handing out “verification” to basically anyone with a popular enough profile, and then forcing them to display this increasingly worthless status symbol.
