Hacker News Reader

Comment by BulgarianIdiot | Hacker News Reader

False endorsement is definitely annoying, yes. It's also illegal.

To go down the rabbit hole that the GP started (about letting people for other people's blue checkmarks), the false endorsement bit can be easily solved by changing the wording of the blue checkmark to be like Reddit Gold: it's something that can be "awarded" to you. Obviously it wouldn't fix how toxic the place is, but I think if the goal is to get out of being sued, it would be enough.

It can definitely be solved. But right now that wording represents "false endorsement" and people are already confused about it and telling those affected that "they've lied" and what not.

> the false endorsement bit can be easily solved by changing the wording of the blue checkmark to be like Reddit Gold: it's something that can be "awarded" to you.

Would changing that text actually be enough? On its face it would still appear to other users as if the people Musk "sponsored" are real subscribers. How many people are going to (know to) click through to those checkmarked users' profiles, click on the blue checkmarks, and discover that bit of information? Especially if the number of sponsored users are a handful out of tens of thousands checkmarked users, meaning that even a person who was in the know would probably be disincentivized from checking every checkmark they saw.

It can also be solved by the people who don’t want blue ticks stuck on their account involuntarily simply joining the exodus of people departing Twitter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com