Twitter claims dead celebs are subscribing to Blue from beyond the grave
theverge.com
theverge.com
The entire point of the blue checkmark was "this account with a high-profile person's/company's name is actually who they say they are".
Turning it into "everyone gets a checkmark that wants one" has destroyed the value of the checkmark. It is, at best, a suckers badge at this point.
$8/mo is the price range that attracts scammers and hustlers that care about showing up in the first 5 replies of a major tweet so they can spam their product to a large audience.
Don't forget about the trolls!
As a result, viewing the replies of any moderately progressive tweeter yields a heap of blue-check abuse as the first glance.
So basically, the twitter stereotype of "Hello my name is firstname bunchanumbes and I have some really shitty opinions" is now bluecheck-boosted.
But I agree with you -- it's the belief they'll get preferential positioning that crypto grifters, SEO lunatics, and marketing slimeballs are banking on.
Personas of people who would buy Blue at this point fall into a few buckets:
• The aforementioned group of users hoping for preferential positioning
• People who simply want to show support for Elon/Twitter by paying
• People who are desperate for a blue check, to feel important
• People who find value in the features of Twitter Blue (which, if we're honest, are meager)
Lots of overlap in these -- e.g., I think people who are desperate for a blue check are claiming to be subscribed because of the Twitter Blue features -- a modern take on "I read Playboy for the articles."
It has been kind of crazy to see people be mad that their “for you” feed was filled with promoted “blue checks” when no such change had been done yet.
Actually, the first part isn’t even true; lots of the “Block the Blue” types given Blue are still doing Block the Blue (and leveraging the “changing your display name when you have Blue suspends your checkmark” policy, too.) But they’ve added “I’m not actually paying for this shit” on top of “block the blue”.
I do not understand all of the debates, don't like it? Don’t use it. Simple.
I really hate this culture of "cancel person X" and if you use anything "person X" has made, your a racist/bigot/whatever.
This whole blue check politic statement you are making is a strawman.
Edit: This applies in reverse as well. There are definitely fans/admirers of Elon who subscribed immediately as a show of support. But I admit all of this is anecdata, I don't have numbers on how widespread it is.
Of course, in addition to being meaningless, that’s also false in the case of the involuntary Blue accounts. But the absence of verification is a bigger deal with the involuntary gold checks.
The issue with the false notations that people are subscribers (whether its dead celebrities, live celebrities, organizations, or whatever—the specific example of the many Twitter has done in this rollout doesn’t matter) is false endorsement, which aside from being deceptive and unethical is a violation of federal law (the Lanham Act.)
There’s additional issues that come from the fact these are, for organizations (gold check), bypassing verification as well as payment, but the false endorsement one is the most general issue. Bypassing verification isn’t aj issue with Blue largely because Blue verification is meaningless.