Hacker News Reader

Comment by wlesieutre | Hacker News Reader

"Take a respected mark of quality and juice it for cash until it becomes meaningless" has been a staple move of companies since before I was born, but they really did a speed run with the Verified check mark.

View on HN

The twitter checkmark was a mark of authenticity, not quality.

Initially, yes. It later came to be available for notable accounts, or ones Twitter deemed of public interest. That isn't a mark of authenticity, per se.

> That isn't a mark of authenticity, per se.

Do you mean that it became a mark of endorsement?

None of the accounts I followed were blue checks for anything other than the purpose of verifying they statements made were legit from the source, which would be a mark of authenticity, what accounts were just given checks for whatever it is you're insinuating? (pre elon drama)

Even then it wasn't a reliable mark of authenticity as Twitter would often remove verification from authentic accounts as a form of punishment.

I hadn't heard about this, was it common? Who were some accounts that were unverified?

It wasn’t common, but they did it a few times. Here’s one example: https://time.com/5026886/twitter-verification-policy-richard...

This example (because of the underlying rule change) explains why this has been such a focus of the right wing and of Elon. I never really cared about that mark and didn’t understand the focus on it. Literally one of the first things they changed after the takeover.

The platform itself had a higher degree of quality, because the authenticity of a brand was verified and impersonation was less possible.

Rarity tends to evolve towards prestige. I've witnessed it with things as mundane as office chairs. All the chairs were the same model, a small subset were in company colors and developed very high demand. Often, departing employees would "will" their special chairs to colleagues

I assume you're speaking about the quality of the content, which would be subjective, but I think platform quality is relevant here. My personal use for twitter was following some bands and artists I like, I followed them there because I knew it was them or someone authorized to represent them. Once God Emperor Elon took over that went out the window and the quality of the platform, for me (and others), went to 0.

I mean that prior to the change, twitter gave the checkmark to famous people and brands who's identities were verified, not to accounts that they thought posted particularly good content. It was never intended to be a mark of quality in the first place. If [famous celebrity] was posting nothing but their fart schedule, they were eligible for a check. If [random grad student] was posting insightful findings from their research, they weren't eligible for a check mark because they lacked the requisite notability/fame.

It still was correlated with quality to a degree. Most celebrities and notable people or businesses are not going to post their fart schedules or any other kind of similar garbage. This worked as a good heuristic, because even if it missed the highest-quality posters, it would still beat the average Twitter poster by a wide margin.

I disagree, most celebrities were/are posting what may as well be their fart schedules. Why would anybody care the vacations or fancy meals or random musings of some guy famous for being in movies? Some people evidently do care (voyeurism, and they'd care just as much about his fart schedule) but the point is the such an account doesn't have a check mark because it posts relevant or interesting content but rather because the guy is famous for things completely unrelated to what he posts about. The checkmarks for celebrities had nothing to do with what they posted and everything to do with who they are.

I call it "trust arbitrage"

Look up Enshittification from Cory Doctorow.

Or browse HN for 5 minutes and see the term appear over and over and over.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com