Hacker News Reader

Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean the blue check mark no longer implies that the user is who they pretend they are? Anyone can pretend to be any celebrity or politician on Twitter and there is no way to tell which of the dozens of people who pretend to be Famous Person X is actually that person? Or is there still some form of real name policy and identity verification in place?

View on HN

Which is funny because the blue check mark was to help curb the fake/scams/impersonation/... issue, it was in twitter interest not in the blue-ed users'.

Not only making the user paying for that is weird, but then removing the whole pretense of verification on top of it is pretty much recreating an issue Twitter had fought against and almost got under some sort of control (not the bot in general, but the mass scale impersonation). The cherry on the cake being that he wants those paying users to have "less" ads instead of none.

They wanted to create a "premium users" group but somehow confusingly mixed it with their verified users group, while removing the verified part. Might make more money, but it will definitely decrease quality of twitter.

It was already a "premium users" group -- once you are verified you get a slew of additional UI features to filter out the unchecked masses.

You're right, I meant premium as in paying for extra services.

The verification system didn't prevent that anyway. In fact, there's a verified blue check account right now under Elon's latest tweet impersonating Elon:

https://twitter.com/RodArdehali/status/1589022536913797120

It's long been common to see these.

Now that it'll cost $8, the account would be suspended and Twitter keeps the $8.

I’ve noticed that since the 8 dollar checkmarks rolled out today a bunch of people have paid for it and then used it to impersonate Elon. That person you linked might not have been verified beforehand and just bought it today.

I tried to look for their past tweets on the internet archive but didn’t find anything. So I can’t say for sure if they were verified beforehand or not.

I can say fore sure that there were verified fake Elon Musks before the rollout.

For example

https://twitter.com/iamsimonyoung?s=21&t=bk20O5m6wZsdz0lQ9AT...

was posting as Elon Musk at least until 20221102. There was at least one other Elon Musk that was regularly spilled into my timeline, sometimes right before or after the real Elon. These accounts had also the same profile picture. It took me a while to realize that some of these posts are satire. Pretty much the scenario the blue checkmark was supposed to prevent.

I looked into it more and it seems I might be wrong about the rollout. It looks like iOS rolled out the new subscription, but I didn't see if they actually added checkmarks yet. I saw a new story saying checkmarks wouldn't be rolled out until after the election. So, the original commenter might have been right that there were musk impersonators before paid checkmarks became a thing.

The article mentions verification extensively, so I imagine that there's going to be some level of verification involved. Whether the verification system would have issues like stripe.ian.sh[1], I have no idea.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190606021548/https://stripe.ia...

There is absolutely zero verification now and hundreds of people have bought the blue check and named their account things like Elon Musk. Some of them have been banned after reports but there's like 14 people left doing moderation so god speed to that team.

He said twitter is garbage bc all the bots and crypto is garbage bc it's only for scams. Now the guy owns Twitter (by force) and pumps'n'dumps crypto. Integrity at its best.

There have been blue check-marked fake Elon Musks even before the rollout. The blue check was hard to get but it did never really help to ensure authenticity.

Yeah I got this impression too. Depends how they will run the verification department. Given their recent cut backs it will be interesting anyway.

The real concern seems to be if the blue tick will actually hold any value anymore. To give a gaming analogy it's become pay to win.

Does it? I didn't see it in my reading.

> Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”

To me, this sounds like a reactive approach. Whereas previous verification was proactive prevention.

That's what gets me about this. Launching a subscription system makes sense, but discontinuing the verification system and repurposing it as a subscription system makes no sense.

And I thought we all made fun of "the blue checks" bc it implies they think theyre important.

Do you know where it is explicitly stated that there is _no_ verification?

This is a misunderstanding. The public figure verification system isn't being discontinued, it's being shifted over to a secondary tag that says "Public Figure" or something. Like what you see with the "Russia state-affiliated media" tag some people have.

Exactly, the lords stay lords, the peasants stay peasants and for most of us nothing changes. For the lords it'll get more complicated though because the tag system will signify a transition from a two-class society to a multi-kaste system.

Musk is saying that attempts to impersonate will get an account suspended and that he’ll keep the money. This will be the disincentive. I guess we’ll see.

I'm sure the moderation team will be right on top of that...

so.. a political party can create a blue tick fake account right before an election, get misinformation reported, all for $8? bargain.

Are you suggesting that mainstream media would use a twitter account with no former activity and no followers as a source for a news article?

Sounds about right

They said that they are going to have a separate mark for "notable people" to be able to determine real people from fakes (regardless if they pay)

They are basically shifting the meaning of the blue checkmark and trying to use it more as a bot filter rather than identity verification.

Really? It's not say whoever you want to be and get a blue check mark of authenticity for $8/month. That'd be just dumb. Of course there is some verification...

Yes. It's obviously a silly approach that doesn't stand 5 minutes consideration as a business plan. People went to twitter to be outraged, but some went there because they could follow experts in fields, journalists, scientists, writers. They often had blue checks to verify them. Now, anyone can get a blue check. So the blue check is worthless! It weakens the core value of twitter. Will millions of randos pay twitter $8 a month to get a blue check? Will people who valued blue checks drop twitter? Both of these things reduce the future value of going to twitter.

Making blue check a paid cost is like an anti-flywheel plan. Jeff Bezos should have rejected this at the sitdown meeting. When fake Elon Musk and fake Trump and fake Obama start posting on twitter, it won't make people want to go there, will it?

The blue checkmark was worthless before, because:

1. It did not prevent impostors and fake accounts anyway, see my other comment[1] for an example. Others have posted more examples in this thread as well.

2. It was primarily available to celebrities and media personalities. Real experts in fields, journalists, scientists, writers had a hard time getting it if they were not established media personalities already.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33490042

Anyone has been able to apply for verification[0] since 2016, I think Musk is just paywalling the feature. I haven't seen it officially said anywhere that the subscription means you won't be checked for impersonation unless I've missed something.

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/07/19...

Worth pointing out is that although anyone can apply, Twitter has been very selective regarding approval and it's been more of a "Twitter approves of your content" rather than them verifying your identity.

For example: @disclosetv, they have 1M followers, tonnes of articles / media about them, public org and related paperwork, yet they have been rejected 10+ times (IIRC). They mainly repost/cover news that isn't widely covered in MSM/social media.

Meanwhile, random Buzzfeed contributor #9432, 40-view political Twitch streamer #347, satire-account pretending to be a crazy right-winger #12..

When they started removing checkmarks from accounts for unapproved behavior, it stopped being about verification and started being about Twitter's endorsement of the account.

That was a huge unforced error, and its eventually led to this.

However, I think the right thing to do now is to remove the checkmark entirely and not claim Blue accounts are verified if they are in fact not verified.

Musk seems to be compounding a new error on top of the old errors.

Seems like he's making it more of a "verified human" mark as a bot-farm is not going to pay for 1000 marks that can get banned. Not to mention backend protections such as 1 mark per creditcard, or checking the name of the holder against the account etc. might be somewhat effective at reducing spam..

Boy was I wrong here

Reply on news.ycombinator.com