Twitter for iOS Updated with New $8 Subscription Offering Verification | Hacker News Reader

Twitter for iOS Updated with New $8 Subscription Offering Verification

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38 pointsmfiguiere75 comments

Really this should be orthogonal to a verification check, IMHO.

Blue check: Enough people are interested in pretending to be me that Twitter has verified this account as being mine. I get a few perks related to managing the immense torrent of bullshit that this level of fame sends my way.

Green star: I like Twitter enough to pay a few bucks to do my part to help keep the servers running, and to pay the programmers and moderators to do their job. I get a few perks like multiple/animated user icons, longer post lengths, and the ability to post offsite links without Twitter's algorithm hiding them.

Got a blue check? Great! You're someone famous! Got a green star? Great! You're helping to keep the site running! Got a blue check AND a green star? Super awesome, you're someone famous who's also helping to keep the site running!

But this does require turning Twitter into a place people are enjoying going to before anyone likes it enough to pay a few bucks, and well, good luck with that, mister "I'm going to eliminate all censorship on Twitter and let Trump back on".

I'm fine with just the one blue check for anyone willing to pay. I'm guessing existing blue checks will be grandfathered in, but maybe not. that would be a great immediate new revenue stream to make all those people start paying or lose their check. In any case, non checked people will most likely be entirely invisible now, which is totally fine. the noise from them is so bad

Blue checks will be given a grace period before they have to start their subscription pricing.

https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/twitter-verified-users...

Yeah I’d prefer this.

I’ve yet to see if people will lose their verification if they don’t pay. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep mine, and I’ve been paying for Twitter Blue until now anyway.

They could do the Youtube Premium approach of being just inconvenienced enough to finally subscribe

I’m surprised that it works but people subscribe

I refuse to allow any more ads into my life than I'm forced to. Youtube premium is 100% worth it for that.

Unless you're an apple user, youtube premium has 1 feature that you cannot get through extensions and that is offline play. Everything else is accessible, for free, on every platform save for unjailbroken iphones.

> I like Twitter enough to pay a few bucks to do my part to help keep the servers running

The only part anyone would be playing is digging Musk out of the financial hole he created for himself.

"Give me money to rescue me from my bad business decisions!" is not much of a sales pitch.

Yeah, "I like this site enough to help keep the servers running" was a much easier sell back when I was giving money to Brad et al to keep Livejournal running.

Changelog:

> What’s New - Version 9.34.3 (Nov 5, 2022)

> Starting today, we’re adding great new features to Twitter Blue, and have more on the way soon.

> Get Twitter Blue for $7.99/month if you sign up now

> Blue checkmark: Power to the people: Your account will get a blue checkmark, just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you already follow.

> Availability: Twitter Blue with verification is currently available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

$8 for a verified badge seems like a steal for scammers, phishers, etc, looking to get someone to part with their money.

Wouldn't that be useless to scammers given that they'd have to provide their payment details?

Plenty of ways around that, like prepaid debit cards, using stolen credit cards, etc.

If you're going to imitate say, Buzz Aldrin, wouldn't card-based verification require that you steal Buzz Aldrin's credit card, specifically?

Neither a random stolen card nor a prepaid card are going to work for verification in that scenario.

That makes the problem way harder.

How do you think scammers pay for things? It’s with other people’s credit cards.

Depends if they already scammed some payment details.

Stolen credit cards.

Also, the $8 price will make it useful for card testing, the practice of checking whether stolen credit cards work.

I've worked at places that had to implement policies limiting features for a while because scammers would use credit cards that would turn out to be fraudulent. I don't know the details of how they worked it out, but they could sign up, send SPAM via us, and then the account would get shut down a week later (and we'd get a huge hit to our deliverability because of their SPAM).

>I'm not saying that Twitter won't take steps to prevent this. I'm just saying that there are a lot of scams that are worth more than $8/mo.

In this situation it's $8 just to attempt to scam someone. Every time you fail you pay again. It actually should incentivize Twitter to improve their scammer-catching algorithms/systems-- at $8 per offender that's not a bad payout at all.

"$7.99/month if you sign up now": Hey, this price hike (from $4.99 to $7.99) is just the start!

"Blue checkmark: Power to the people": We've heard that there's long been confusion over what qualifies some people to be "verified", and we're solving that problem by making the blue checkmark just mean "this person is giving us money!"

"Half the ads & much better ones": Who wouldn't want to pay for better ads!

"Priority ranking for quality content": Because if you're giving us $8 a month, what you say must be higher-quality than those plebes who aren't!

In short, our best days are absolutely ahead, and we are absolutely not preparing an "Our Incredible Journey" post just, you know, in case! (Seriously, we can't, because we laid off all our writers.)

>(Seriously, we can't, because we laid off all our writers.)

I wonder if Musk is going to have GPT-3/GPT-J with some volunteers supervision to alleviate that. Hmm.

The "context" feature that hit White House and Elon Musk tweets are already outsourced to users, no?

It should cost more than that. Make it clear that this is intended for corporations / brands and that this subsidizes regular people.

I think the idea is to encourage all non-bot users to pay for it. Or at least get a big portion of them, kind of like how it’s normal to pay for Spotify or Hulu.

It's normal to pay for Spotify and Hulu because you get access to stream copyrighted materials monthly for a small fee. It would not be normal to pay for those services just to get a blue checkmark on your profile.

It's not only a verification service, you get more features.

verified account tweets get amplified so you are paying for that, also you are paying to reduce cybersquatting of your name (if it is of value to you)

You would think the opposite would be true... amplifying tweets sounds an awful like turning it into a cesspool of marketers like LinkedIn.

I suppose this is the value prop:

1. For people who post, you will be treated better by the ranking and spam systems. The blue checkmark may be like the “blue bubbles” iMessage thing where it’s not-so-subtly a marker of ingroup status.

2. For readers, you get to see less ads.

I don’t use Twitter much, but I could imagine it being worth it for people who spend a lot of time on the app.

So spammers can now pay $8 to better circumvent spam systems? Sounds like a terrible idea ripe for abuse.

Spammers are usually cycling through accounts rapidly. If they pay, that gets a lot harder. You’d still enforce against spammers who pay the $8, but the requirement to pay will reduce the volume and make the problem more manageable.

I guess it depends on what your definition of spam is. I think it people are paying to be promoted then it is the same as an ad, and to me ads are a form of spam if I don't want to see them.

$8 doesn't sound like the right price either. Most users will not be able to afford this (not that they can't pay it with their saving. It isn't worth it).

Which doesn't go with the idea of a public square free speech platform. Real public squares don't require you to pay to enter. And actual free speech should be influenced by those who are willing and/or able to pay for the privilege

https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?...

I doubt anyone is really going to care all that much if all the unchecked randos lose their voice on twitter. It will clean up the noise by a lot.

If that is the “normal people” tier, it’s too much. I should not pay the same as McDonalds or even a C list celebrity.

I would swing $4 if they added encrypted DMs.

There should be a separate tier for corporations.

There should be a tier for content creators, journalists, and others who use it for work. Politicians and governments should pay something.

But for average people sure pay a few bucks a month or become the product.

Is there still any verification involved or is it just blue check mark for money? Does providing your payment details count as some form of verification and is that information linked to the Twitter user?

launched this feature within a week of takeover while layoffs for half the team is going.

if he launches edit tweets by next week, I will sign up for twitter blue.

let’s see how he handles bots and crypto scam part.

Edit tweets are already a feature of Twitter Blue.

Scams are going to get much worse when anyone can pay $8 to be "verified."

Is this the fastest change that Twitter has every pushed out?

This will be an amazing tool for scammers. You get priority comments, you get a blue checkmark to more easily impersonate others, and also LESS ads (amazing lol).

All we wanted is a chonological timeline (without having to rely on tricks) of the tweets & retweets from the people you actively chose to follow, and no ads when you pay. Bonus points if it had restored "save means bookmark for later" instead of being another retweet button.

Instead, we get: it still has ads, even more tracking (for "better ads") and algorithms are still hiding content you chose to follow even if you pay.

Chronological timeline: click on the button on the top right corner, select "Latest tweets"

You can bookmark tweets, it's on the Share menu below each one

I'm honestly already so sick of the media circus around this, and everyone watching breathless from the sidelines with hot takes. Elon is truly a master at focusing millions of eyeballs on himself and everything he does, but I'd be happy if HN didn't have a top level post for every single movement the guy makes.

He's right up there with Kanye and the Kardashians, et al. I hate that I know who they are and what they're up to because you can't scan the day's news without being informed about their activities.

It's really the intersection of stuff though - he's driving plenty of the attention, but Twitter's also a large and influential company, so changes to their business model, moderation, and staffing are all things that would make the front page of HN even if their CEO was someone less interesting.

I'm feeling burned out on it all as well, but it's not as if each of these moves is some meaningless thing that's being hyped up just because it's Musk. If Facebook started charging $8 for a super-Instagram account, that'd be big news.

It's not as if we get posts for random things about Tesla or SpaceX all the time - it's mostly just for major launches, product or rocket. The recent circus is exceptional because it's so many movements happening so fast.

Musk is getting what he wants again with his tweets, drastic changes that is causing wanton outrage and chaos rippling over the news and the internet.

It's really funny to watch, the 'villain' of the month getting your attention every day, rent free.

Agree, though rather than be annoyed I opted to have some fun. Using a browser plugin that automatically changes all occurrences of selected words in a web page I now get a snarky chuckle whenever EM is mentioned. Also works well for craven politicians and narcissistic celebrities.

"Laughter is like shock absorbers. Without it you feel every bump in the road."

Elon needs cash.

From the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33483751

It would seem desperately so.

Who doesn’t in this economy?

Elon doesn't

This is true.

To be honest, it's really money of Tesla shareholders that is at stake. Sure, Elon will take a hit, because the math is intractable. So this thing will go south, but it's Tesla shareholders that will eat most of the losses, not Elon.

Excited to watch Twitter go the way of Digg.

If Apple takes 30%, Elon needs to sell 14 million checkmarks to make payments on the debt.

A Twitter spokesperson said they have 238 million mDAU (monetizable daily active Twitter users) as of Q2'2022. That'd be a conversion rate of 6% — not impossible.

Literally impossible. They’ll get 1% at best, probably 0.1% in all likelihood.

I'm not a business expert but in my opinion Twitter would have to offer more compelling services that people would feel inclined to sign up for. A checkmark alone will just get the people that value the checkmark and a 50% reduction in ads. When anyone can get a blue checkmark it will lose some its perceived value.

Perhaps there should be a poll to see how many find the checkmark compelling enough alone to subscribe.

And Elon said that's a lie and 90% of them are bots, so...

The small "m" is supposed to mean monetizable (i.e. real) users, but yes — if that's incorrect, then Elon is absolutely screwed.

Wonder if that includes any users from the EU? Twitter Blue isn’t even available there

It doesn't appear to actually be there when I checked. Is everyone else seeing this?

All I see is the previously existing $4.99 a month option. I did update the app to the newest version.

What is the value proposition for this subscription, should include boring flamethrower or some internet connection from space.

How are they verifying people?

They swipe your credit card every month for 7.99

Why wouldn't they release this on web first, so it becomes available for everybody? It would've required much less effort to implement.

I want to buy it but I'm on android.

Green losers don't get blue checkmarks.

I'm pretty sure Twitter always releases features on iOS first.

More difficult to bot on iOS? If they're worried that their verification process might have flaws and don't want thousands of fake accounts on day 1 and all the bad press, the cost of the devices and difficulty in jailbreaking is a kind of safety net maybe.

Could be. But requiring payments should eliminate almost all bots already, especially at $8.

> Availability: Twitter Blue with verification is currently available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Does the user base outside of the English speaking world no longer exist?

They must have fired the localization team.

Blue has been unavailable in all EU countries since the beginning.

Most of the advertising and bot traffic is in English. This is an attempt to make the spam less lucrative - got to start somewhere. It will roll out globally eventually.

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