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Comment by m0meni | Hacker News Reader

I feel like people are forgetting the real value of verification. If you aren't verified, someone will pretend to be you on Twitter. Prominent people aren't paying $8 to get a check, they're paying $8 to make sure they can't be easily impersonated, which I think is really worth it.

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I would be surprised if they do any "verification" at all. If you are a paining member, you will get a special icon. That's it.

I knew web forums that had that. Members that donated to the forum got a special status icon. It could get "trendy" and every one wants to show that they are part of the in-group.

Having to pay in order to be save from impersonation sound like extortion though.

You are being downvoted, but the news just broke that this is true. No id verification will take place for the $8. Just a cc.

A credit card is tied to your ID through your bank or other cc provider.

If you abuse the rules your payment account and your Twitter account will be banned [0].

Maybe you have more than one CC, but keep playing shenanigans and you’ll eventually run out.

An $8 disincentive is also enough of a bar to knock out 95% of the problem.

0: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587853006699401216#m

That would only be true if scammers and other professional criminals were not already easily able to obtain stolen CCs and other payment methods. And that's who you're trying to protect against, not the average person.

We have sold our public spaces for big tech companies to monetise, but basic functions like preventing fraud must now be paid for again? It’s a form of blackmail. Don’t want to be impersonated in an important public forum? Pay up!

>Prominent people aren't paying $8 to get a check, they're paying $8 to make sure they can't be easily impersonated

If they're giving a checkmark to anyone with $8 to spare, then what is stopping me from registering the "realRealRealDonaldTrump" and paying $8 for that sweet checkmark?

Identity theft is a crime. If a platform facilitates this, it should be liable.

Identity theft is a crime when used to commit fraud. Just claiming to be someone but not otherwise defrauding anyone is fine.

But if a conventional media source published a quote from someone impersonating a public figure, and discovered this, they would publish a correction. Big tech companies wash their hands if this kind of responsibility. That degrades the value of our public spaces.

Note - I am not an American.

From what I have read in American News Media I see so many things that have been blatant lies published by respected News Media like NYT and WaPo. But I don't think I have come across corrections regarding such national and international stories.

Regarding your statement - " ... degrades the value of our public spaces." I believe even your mainstream news media is guilty of the same.

I don’t disagree with this, but it is a form of whataboutism so it doesn’t really undermine the original point that some MSM are also terrible actors. Press in the UK is bad, but I don’t yet see it as this bad.

Twitter verification started because of a fraud and a lawsuit: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/193279-tony-la-russa-law...

The news is that they're effectively removing what verification there was, and the checkmark becomes basically a TF2 hat that means nothing. You'll be able to change your display name to "Elon Musk" and buy a checkmark.

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