Musk’s X revokes paid blue check from United Auto Workers after strike called | Hacker News Reader

Musk’s X revokes paid blue check from United Auto Workers after strike called

arstechnica.com

119 pointscdme43 comments

so this happens automatically due to a change they made to their profile. They just had to re-verify.

arstechnica makes a story out out of it as rage bait. 111 commenters on the arstechnica article rage about 'musk is literally a nazi !! omg' when he had nothing to do with this.

Then is gets posted here, because all Musk rage bait must be posted here for some reason, and once again you guys just eat it up.

Everyone who tries to explain it gets greyed out. ridiculous. this is embarrassing

This article should probably be flagged as misinformation.

https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...

> This article was updated to include information about a Twitter policy to temporarily remove checkmarks from verified accounts that change their profile pictures. Twitter offered only an auto-response to The Intercept before publication

Bit self-inflicted on Musk's part

Edit: to be clear this is a quote from the correction to The Intercepts' article which TFA summarized.

It’s funny how musk is both totally not responsible for any of the good things any of his companies do and yet he is 100% responsible for all of the bad things. Do you really think he has anything to do with replying to press inquiries?

The top comment is right; this thread is embarrassing.

Musks companies all have a policy of refusing to respond to journalists.

Before he acquired it, Twitter responded to press inquiries. When he acquired it, he laid off the PR team. After he acquired it, Twitter stopped responding to those inquiries with anything but a poop emoji.

Yes. He has everything to do with how Twitter replies to press inquiries.

That’s a stretch. UAW could’ve confirmed it. Twitter pops up a big warning when you try to change your PFP. It’s like if I went to AT&T, changed my number, and complained that AT&T was preventing people from calling me.

My statement has nothing to do with the UAW or changing your PFP. It's entirely about how Twitter deals or doesn't deal with the press.

> Do you really think he has anything to do with replying to press inquiries?

Yes. He has posted several examples from his personal account of how the Press email will respond to inquiries, first stating it will respond with a poop emoji [0] and then with the “we’ll reply soon” infinite loop [1].

[0] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1637420728743088130

[1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1682224971647528961

Musk does a good job of staying in the news. Does feel like he is pushing the line with arbitrarily toggling the blue check on a whim.

I thought he was an opponent of unlimited free speech. Apparently not.

Changing profile picture automatically removes the blue check. I believe there’s a big confirmation dialog you have to click through. This article seems deceptive.

> Twitter’s verification policy temporarily removes verification from accounts that change profile pictures, which the UAW did in conjunction with the walkout.

from https://theintercept.com/2023/09/15/uaw-strike-twitter-verif...

> Changing profile picture automatically removes the blue check. I believe there’s a big confirmation dialog you have to click through. This article seems deceptive.

I think I can see why that is necessary given the hellscape that Twitter now is. But on the other hand, it is wild that it's necessary. It shows you how obviously broken the whole thing is.

Forcing customers to re-verify when they change a profile photo? Perhaps verification isn't the best thing to be selling.

>Ford has claimed that the deal UAW was negotiating would have doubled automaker labor costs, and the Intercept noted that often wage increases won by union workers "trickle down" to non-unionized workers like Tesla's. That perhaps worried Musk, who seemingly has a financial interest in keeping autoworker wages low and a history of union-busting.

That's absurd speculation. Directly, this has a negative impact on Tesla's competitors only. Hard to imagine he would actually think changing a checkmark would have an impact on his own staff's salaries via that route.

> That's absurd speculation

I don’t know, it seems like a pretty good argument to me

> Hard to imagine he would actually think changing a checkmark would have an impact on his own staff's salaries via that route.

It would if the group is stripped of legitimacy when communicating with the outside world

sectoral bargaining is very, very common in a lot of countries with a strong union presence. In fact it's almost the norm. In most places literal union membership is not high.

It's not absurd and not even speculation, it happens all the time. It's also simply logical because if a large employer (read: buyer of labour) raises wages there is immediately increased competition on the labour market. It's the inverse of a large vendor dropping prices

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining

You'd think Musk would rejoice that the UAW is helping Tesla out and like give them two blue checks for free or something.

Clearly his political views have become more important to him than even his desire for profit. Pretty incredible.

Would that not be something positive?

Only if he agrees with MY beliefs!

Wow. He can totally do that. Democratic or social institutions regulated by a private company.

Removing the checkmark from the UAW's Twitter account is in no way regulating the institution itself. Musk even relented and put the checkmark back.

Don't get me wrong - the unchecked power of billionaires in a society converging towards military industrial oligarchy and centralized control of consensus reality through the media, full of easily controlled and manipulated voters pathologically afraid of effective government, is definitely a problem worth being afraid of. But this isn't an example of it. This is just another "rich babyman throws his toys out of the pram" moment for Musk.

> unchecked power

Hah.

He can do it until the site completes its slide into irrelevance.

It's already irrelevant, we're just watching the freakshow at this point.

It's only "irrelevant" like CNN or Fox News.

i.e. maybe irrelevant to a certain "elite"/group, but still very relevant to tens or hundreds of millions of people.

Do not mistake the opinion of a filter bubble/echo chamber like HN for that of the population at large.

The population at large, if they know what Twitter is at all, surely already know it is ruined, just as surely as they understand that Musk, despite his many abilities, is a capricious, petulant man-baby who is acting out.

Yes, he can. We're criticizing him for being an oligarch and a hypocrite, not calling for regulation or whining about the First Amendment rights of the UAW.

This information can actually be used in any NLRB trial against Elon's other companies (also, including twitter).

If UAW are to succeed, Tesla's workers are going to realize they're missing out.

There's no evidence yet that "he" did it. Slow down and let information come out before rushing to judgement.

I'm no fan of Elon Musk or Twitter/X, but to be fair any user who changes their display name or photo loses their verification and must be re-verified.

That's the way it worked before but I don't think it works that way now that you have to pay for the check.

Fair point, it's hard to say what the reality is right now without testing it directly the moment you ask the question. The haphazard management and rapid changes (and rollbacks) means even help docs can be out of date.

According to the verification policy linked by the The Intercept article linked by the Ars Technica article, it is

https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...

It is that way, especially so since being able to pay for the check. That way you don't change your name to Ford (bluecheck) as people did in the beginning of the system.

If that is indeed their policy, there must surely be some example of just this happening before these strikes, right?

Yes, according to the linked The Intercept article:

> Twitter’s verification policy temporarily removes verification from accounts that change profile pictures, which the UAW did in conjunction with the walkout.

This is not a prior example like the parent comment asked for

Yes there are prior cases including my own user. They disabled my blue mark couple times in the past because I first changed my user name and the I also changed my user picture. In both cases X/Twitter disabled my blue for couple days. And I am nobody nor anti Elon or pro Elon.

ArsTechnica's journalism was insanely sloppy and flakey on this one. Shame on them.

It's like boomers complaining that their laptop doesn't work properly because it's Bill Gates's fault somehow.

I'd say this is exactly the kind of petty thing Elon would do though.

To be fair, I could probably spin an semi-plausible argument for that claim.

FTA:

> By midday Friday, UAW's verified check was reinstated. The Intercept's reporter, Ryan Grim, posted on X, writing, "Elon put the blue check back up. Maybe the Big Three will fold this fast too."

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