Twitter Blue, subscriptions and paid-for verification no longer available | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Blue, subscriptions and paid-for verification no longer available

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24 pointsnixcraft11 comments

https://nitter.net/ZoeSchiffer/status/1591081913166745601#m

NEW: Twitter has suspended the launch of Twitter Blue and is actively trying to stop people from subscribing "to help address impersonation issues," per an internal note. 1/

The announcement was posted on Slack: "An update on what we did tonight: hid the entry point to Twitter Blue, added the 'official' label for ONLY advertisers. Note: here is at least one way for users to sign up for Blue. Legacy Blue users can go to subscriptions and upgrade" 2/

"Note 2: Existing Blue subscribers will still have access to their Blue features." 3/

Twitter has also disabled Blue from being purchased on Apple iOS. 4/4

edit: I bet this is what he had to do to get Robin Wheeler to stay.

The easy solution here is to just drop the paid verification plan, I'm not sure why they're so insistent on it. Outside of the bump from joke impersonations, was there a large number of people signing up for the check mark? I somehow doubt it.

Geniuinely curious - is it the easy solution if it aligns with Musk's vision? I mean. "keeping twitter on the rails" and "reshaping twitter in musk's vision" may not be two things that overlap. Where does he go from here if he wants to equalize twitter and reduce bots based on paid verification. Maybe keep verification/blue checks for brands and politicians and remove blue checks from journalists/influencers? I think the old money liberal journalists are the the group he gripes with the most.

But how can we tell if this tweet is real?

The same way everyone verified everything online before 2015

Careful now, we can't have people thinking for themselves. People need to be functionally mindless to remain obedient workers for the elite.

hm.. What information would you use without a web of trust to validate information online? I think before 2015 we just said never trust anything online and everyone you're talking to is probably a 40 year old man trying to scam you. What is "thinking for yourself" in this case, using your confirmation bias to find the information online that validates your priors?

What information do fact checkers, journalists, and other so-called authorities use to validate information? Why do you believe they are the arbiters of truth?

How would your rationale fair during the Copernican Revolution? In 1615, just a few hundred years ago, the arbiters of truth concluded that heliocentrism was foolish, absurd, and heretical since it contradicted the prevailing thought of the time.

If you really spend the time to think through the question, I think you'll conclude there is no reason for these fools to be gate keeping, especially when they consistently get most things wrong most of the time.

Ironically, before Twitter validated people, people relied _more_ on "these fools" because no one trusted anything outside of university and media websites

And in the copernican revolution I probably wouldn’t have believed in heliocentrism and lost almost nothing in life, but it wasn’t casual observers who changed that world either, it was people who dedicated their life to it, akin to the “ checkers, journalists, and other so-called authorities” you mention.

Was anything verified online prior 2015? as I recall in the early days of the internet it was just trust nothing, what do you remember about validating online information prior to 2015?

To be fair you can't contact Twitter for a comment because there's no one left in the communications department.

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