It seems I had missed this: You could just buy a twitter verification mark without actually verifying your identity? Like, the checkmark was now just a decorative perk from being on Twitter Blue...
It seems I had missed this: You could just buy a twitter verification mark without actually verifying your identity? Like, the checkmark was now just a decorative perk from being on Twitter Blue or something? I thought you just had to basically pay for the verification service?
Here's my understanding, but take it with a grain of salt because the situation was really stupid: He discontinued the old verification mark and introduced a check mark for 'Twitter Blue' to show...
Here's my understanding, but take it with a grain of salt because the situation was really stupid:
He discontinued the old verification mark and introduced a check mark for 'Twitter Blue' to show that you paid the $8. For incomprehensible reasons, he made the Twitter Blue mark look the exact same, so people appeared to be verified to a casual observer. Then they briefly realised that they still needed an actual verification mark, so they introduced a second mark (I'm not joking) that looked the same but was grey instead of blue. Then removed it again after less than a day.
How much iteration do you need? It's obviously a dumb idea. Start by verifying identity, and also including notability requirements. Give those accounts a mark. Don't stop doing that, but...
How much iteration do you need? It's obviously a dumb idea.
Start by verifying identity, and also including notability requirements. Give those accounts a mark.
Don't stop doing that, but introduce a new system where people can get the same mark by paying a small amount of money.
Boost the paid for accounts in the algorithm.
Claim that, somehow, this will help fight scams and spam.
In the ensuing chaos, introduce a hidden description saying "this account was verified" or "this account paid".
When that's not enough introduce a second mark for the first group
Give up when you realise several of your very large, very wealthy, very powerful, customers have had their stock tanked by millions of dollars.
All the chaos was predictable.
His claim, that malicious actors would not pay to get the mark, ignores the large amounts of money that scammers pay in order to defeat anti-scammer actions or that spammers pay to get their spam delivered.
It’s a distorted version of a more reasonable claim that if you raise the costs to spammers for creating new accounts, it’s going to help keep spammers out by making it more expensive for them to...
It’s a distorted version of a more reasonable claim that if you raise the costs to spammers for creating new accounts, it’s going to help keep spammers out by making it more expensive for them to create lots of accounts. It probably does help, particularly if you don’t let them use the same credit card again after kicking them out. But you still need to keep up enforcement in other ways and keep kicking them out.
But those spammers are now sporting a blue check that most users will mistake for a verification mark, making them more effective. It's not a big stretch to expect that that $8 cost will more than...
But those spammers are now sporting a blue check that most users will mistake for a verification mark, making them more effective. It's not a big stretch to expect that that $8 cost will more than pay for itself, especially now that a big chunk of the moderation team that kicks spammers out was fired, likely meaning that spammers stay on the site longer.
That argument seems to be missing some steps, though. The verification mark was a real measure against fake accounts and it seems paying for the subscription service introduced no new restrictions...
That argument seems to be missing some steps, though. The verification mark was a real measure against fake accounts and it seems paying for the subscription service introduced no new restrictions for spammers while giving them a new tool (a mark that looks like a verification but isn't). This would work if, for example, only likes by people with paid subscriptions are used in the algorithm or something. But that doesn't seem to be the case? You can still create accounts for free with the same amount of effort as before.
It's implicitly assuming competence. The part where they stopped verifying blue-checked accounts at the same time they started charging for them is a level of stupidity that I didn't expect. I...
It's implicitly assuming competence. The part where they stopped verifying blue-checked accounts at the same time they started charging for them is a level of stupidity that I didn't expect. I would have thought that charging for it means you can afford to pay for verification and do more of it at scale.
I guess they thought they could ban them later after they impersonated someone? That punishment after the fact would be good enough?
I know people predicted advertisers fleeing, and general social media moderation chaos, but I didn't see any predictions of chaos around paid verification moderation. Did I miss something?
All the chaos was predictable.
I know people predicted advertisers fleeing, and general social media moderation chaos, but I didn't see any predictions of chaos around paid verification moderation.
All the conversation I've seen before seemed to assume that "paid verification" actually includes verification, as in, some guy in a call center looks at your passport or something. They didn't...
All the conversation I've seen before seemed to assume that "paid verification" actually includes verification, as in, some guy in a call center looks at your passport or something. They didn't introduce "verification", it's just a mark that shows you've paid a small amount of money. And they made it look like the person was actually verified.
I have trouble comprehending this but apparently that's because it actually is that stupid. If I had known the mechanics of the new "verification" mark beforehand than, yes, this would have been a concern to me.
Kind of like everyone assumed Auto-pilot would include some sort of automatic piloting? With Musk demanding a paid verification in a week then firing whole teams, in hindsight... everyone seemed...
seemed to assume that "paid verification" actually includes verification
Kind of like everyone assumed Auto-pilot would include some sort of automatic piloting?
With Musk demanding a paid verification in a week then firing whole teams, in hindsight... everyone seemed surprisingly optimistic about the whole "paid verification" thing. Me included.
I don't see where iteration comes in. Even without any testing it is obvious that if two things look identical, people will mistake one for the other. There's also no comprehensible reason for...
I don't see where iteration comes in. Even without any testing it is obvious that if two things look identical, people will mistake one for the other. There's also no comprehensible reason for that one week deadline as far as I know, so I think it's safe to say the reasons remain incomprehensible.
Yes, it was rather surprising that Musk went with the stupidest possible version of this service. I had assumed that your name had to match the credit card, or maybe some ID. Stripe charges $1.50...
Yes, it was rather surprising that Musk went with the stupidest possible version of this service. I had assumed that your name had to match the credit card, or maybe some ID.
Stripe charges $1.50 a person to verify ID. Couldn't they have gone with that? I guess it would require writing code and signing a contract.
(Yes, requiring real names is bad, but it would make sense for auto-verifying an account, and they could go with the existing system for processing exceptions.)
It seems like this is the kind of stuff that could really get Twitter into hot water. Even if they were somehow able to wean themselves off of advertising, the very quantifiable stock losses and...
However, while Twitter has possibly never been funnier, Musk knows that not every user relying on Twitter Blue to sow confusion through brand impersonation has been posting “epically funny” jokes. One of the most disturbing fake posts yesterday was an account impersonating the pharmaceutical brand Eli Lilly, falsely telling people with diabetes that insulin is now free. The actual brand had to tweet an apology after the fake account was retweeted thousands of times, including by those who seemingly believed the news was true. This is where Musk apparently draws the line with "tricking" Twitter users. Soon after, the jokes resumed, with another fake account mimicking the official Eli Lilly account’s apology tweet, using similar phrasing to mock the brand for charging $400 for its insulin.
It seems like this is the kind of stuff that could really get Twitter into hot water. Even if they were somehow able to wean themselves off of advertising, the very quantifiable stock losses and brand defamation that can be tied to the platform might be a bit of an issue if anyone wants to make a legal thing of it. Starting to think Elon just wants Twitter for the insurance money or something.
Yes, but I humbly counter that it's hilarious and makes me disappointed that I didn't think of it myself. Tanking an evil pharmaceutical company's stock by tens of millions might be the best damn...
Yes, but I humbly counter that it's hilarious and makes me disappointed that I didn't think of it myself. Tanking an evil pharmaceutical company's stock by tens of millions might be the best damn use of $8 there is, and the person behind it deserves a medal.
I wonder if he bought Twitter primarily to bring Trump back. Then he owns the communication medium the former president uses to listen to and speak to his followers. That’s especially powerful if...
I wonder if he bought Twitter primarily to bring Trump back. Then he owns the communication medium the former president uses to listen to and speak to his followers. That’s especially powerful if he gets re-elected.
He did just fire the privacy and compliance people. Maybe he wants control over what specific people see?
I've always wondered that too. I think it is unlikely to be the primary reason. Musk simply stated his reason for buying Twitter was he felt it was badly run and undervalued. The timelines back...
I've always wondered that too.
I think it is unlikely to be the primary reason.
Musk simply stated his reason for buying Twitter was he felt it was badly run and undervalued.
The timelines back that up.
Trump was dumped from twitter in early 2001.
Trump started Truth Social late 2021.
Musk started heavily buying Twitter stock early 2022
Truth Social seemed like a disaster at about the same time Musk offered to buy Twitter at $54.20 (April 2022)
Musk tried to back out of the Twitter deal when it was obvious tech stocks including twitter were overvalued.
Truth Social irons out its kinks, but is still mostly a ghost town.
I think it would be funny if Musk allowed Trump back on to twitter at this point. In a very black humor sort of way.
I think he bought it to quite literally buy popularity and attention. "Undervalued" might actually be correct, because attention is really valuable in today's day and age. Also, I imagine he's...
Musk simply stated his reason for buying Twitter was he felt it was badly run and undervalued.
I think he bought it to quite literally buy popularity and attention. "Undervalued" might actually be correct, because attention is really valuable in today's day and age. Also, I imagine he's pretty bored having enough money to buy nearly anything, being the #1 globally-discussed topic isn't something you can buy in a store (though as this saga shows, it is something you can buy).
It also partially explains why this paid verification was so obviously flawed: it was by design to get satire accounts and controversy.
I feel like we need to be a bit more cautious about "This is what Musk intended all along". Perhaps he is an evil genius and wants this chaos. But it's also likely that he's dumb and lucky, and...
It also partially explains why this paid verification was so obviously flawed: it was by design to get satire accounts and controversy.
I feel like we need to be a bit more cautious about "This is what Musk intended all along". Perhaps he is an evil genius and wants this chaos. But it's also likely that he's dumb and lucky, and he's just making dumb mistakes. Very rich people normally surround themselves with smart people to take care of stuff (he's not an employment lawyer, so he pays for good employment lawyers to handle that stuff). Except Musk just fired a bunch of people from Twitter, so he got rid of many of his protective smart people.
I feel like people don't appreciate how stupidly rich Musk is, which leads them to analyze his acquisition as though it were some rational financial decision. Last I checked (at least prior to...
Starting to think Elon just wants Twitter for the insurance money or something.
I feel like people don't appreciate how stupidly rich Musk is, which leads them to analyze his acquisition as though it were some rational financial decision. Last I checked (at least prior to this acquisition), Musk was worth something like 100 billion dollars. He's not just among the wealthiest people in the world; by most measures, he's effectively infinitely rich. 1
So sure, if we had access to 50 billion dollars, most of us would probably spend it more carefully. But 50 billion dollars is only like half of his net worth, and half of infinity is still infinity, so he still remains effectively infinitely rich. I don't think Musk acquired Twitter to make a profit. I think he acquired Twitter because he's a Twitter addict, and unlike other Twitter addicts who have ideas but no means to effect them, Musk has ideas and a stupid amount of money he can't fathomably exhaust even if he were to order a new super yacht every year for the rest of his life.
1 Of course, being worth 100 billion dollars is not the same as having access to 100 billion dollars. I don't think this really undermines my thesis, however: Musk can afford to be reckless so long as it doesn't undermine his other ventures (Tesla, SpaceX, etc).
He's rich, arrogant, and out of touch, but if he weren't worried about the money, he wouldn't have tried so hard to get out of it. I think the miscalculation is that he didn't think there could be...
He's rich, arrogant, and out of touch, but if he weren't worried about the money, he wouldn't have tried so hard to get out of it.
I think the miscalculation is that he didn't think there could be a contract that he couldn't somehow get out of.
True, but apparently he'd rather commit to a 50 billion dollar mistake than be scrutinized by the Delaware chancery court. I don't think it was likely that they would have forced the deal to...
True, but apparently he'd rather commit to a 50 billion dollar mistake than be scrutinized by the Delaware chancery court. I don't think it was likely that they would have forced the deal to completion? Or maybe he just committed a the multibillion dollar sunken cost fallacy, preferring to squander some 50 billion dollars for Twitter than a few billion in fines/fees for nil?
My understanding (based largely on Matt Levine’s writing) is that he was likely to lose in court regardless. The court would then order the merger to go through and he’d legally be required to do...
My understanding (based largely on Matt Levine’s writing) is that he was likely to lose in court regardless. The court would then order the merger to go through and he’d legally be required to do it. (The billion dollar breakup fee doesn’t apply.)
The contract was properly written and if it didn’t hold up then anyone with a merger agreement they didn’t like anymore could get off the hook with quite flimsy arguments.
If Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is going to antagonize U.S. senators, he might want to think twice about taunting Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who sits on numerous subcommittees with oversight into his companies.
After a Washington Post reporter was able to create a verified Twitter account impersonating Markey on Saturday, the senator wrote a letter to Musk demanding an explanation. “Selling the truth is dangerous and unacceptable. Twitter must explain how this happened and how it will prevent it from happening again,” Markey wrote, adding that Twitter has become the “Wild West of social media.”
Seemingly unbothered by the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on his platform, Musk replied to Markey with a snarky tweet on Sunday morning, writing, “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?”
Musk followed up with another tweet mocking Markey for wearing a mask in his profile picture. “And why does your [profile picture] have a mask?!” he wrote.
This surely isn’t the last we’ll hear from Markey about Musk’s Twitter debacle, especially now that Democrats have maintained control over the Senate. The senator sits on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and is on numerous subcommittees that have oversight not only into Twitter but also two other Musk-owned companies, SpaceX and Tesla. Markey is a member of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Communication, Media and Broadband, as well as the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security, both of which could investigate Twitter. He is also on the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Maritime, Freight, and Ports. That subcommittee has oversight on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is currently investigating Tesla over the safety of its autopilot feature (as Markey put it, “for killing people”). And Markey sits on the Subcommittee on Space and Science, which has oversight on SpaceX.
As Markey wrote in a tweet responding to Musk, “Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”
I think this buyout was at best an elaborate shitpost that cost Musk dearly and at worst his attempt to manipulate the stock market for his own personal gain. He agreed to the deal then tried to...
I think this buyout was at best an elaborate shitpost that cost Musk dearly and at worst his attempt to manipulate the stock market for his own personal gain.
He agreed to the deal then tried to renege on it, arguing that Twitter failed to disclose information about bots and fake accounts. Musk has now ironically paved the way for fake accounts and disinformation to flourish. It's so bad that Eli Lilly's stock plummeted due to a fake tweet announcing that insulin would be free.
Twitter Blue was a good idea in theory but making it synonymous with and indistinguishable from the actual verification process was a shitshow waiting to happen. Who in their right mind will want to advertise on Twitter moving forward after this?
It seems I had missed this: You could just buy a twitter verification mark without actually verifying your identity? Like, the checkmark was now just a decorative perk from being on Twitter Blue or something? I thought you just had to basically pay for the verification service?
It appears so. Still trying (failing) to comprehend that decision.
Here's my understanding, but take it with a grain of salt because the situation was really stupid:
He discontinued the old verification mark and introduced a check mark for 'Twitter Blue' to show that you paid the $8. For incomprehensible reasons, he made the Twitter Blue mark look the exact same, so people appeared to be verified to a casual observer. Then they briefly realised that they still needed an actual verification mark, so they introduced a second mark (I'm not joking) that looked the same but was grey instead of blue. Then removed it again after less than a day.
He forced his employees to do it in a week, didn't he? That's not a lot of time for iteration.
How much iteration do you need? It's obviously a dumb idea.
Start by verifying identity, and also including notability requirements. Give those accounts a mark.
Don't stop doing that, but introduce a new system where people can get the same mark by paying a small amount of money.
Boost the paid for accounts in the algorithm.
Claim that, somehow, this will help fight scams and spam.
In the ensuing chaos, introduce a hidden description saying "this account was verified" or "this account paid".
When that's not enough introduce a second mark for the first group
Give up when you realise several of your very large, very wealthy, very powerful, customers have had their stock tanked by millions of dollars.
All the chaos was predictable.
His claim, that malicious actors would not pay to get the mark, ignores the large amounts of money that scammers pay in order to defeat anti-scammer actions or that spammers pay to get their spam delivered.
It’s a distorted version of a more reasonable claim that if you raise the costs to spammers for creating new accounts, it’s going to help keep spammers out by making it more expensive for them to create lots of accounts. It probably does help, particularly if you don’t let them use the same credit card again after kicking them out. But you still need to keep up enforcement in other ways and keep kicking them out.
But those spammers are now sporting a blue check that most users will mistake for a verification mark, making them more effective. It's not a big stretch to expect that that $8 cost will more than pay for itself, especially now that a big chunk of the moderation team that kicks spammers out was fired, likely meaning that spammers stay on the site longer.
That argument seems to be missing some steps, though. The verification mark was a real measure against fake accounts and it seems paying for the subscription service introduced no new restrictions for spammers while giving them a new tool (a mark that looks like a verification but isn't). This would work if, for example, only likes by people with paid subscriptions are used in the algorithm or something. But that doesn't seem to be the case? You can still create accounts for free with the same amount of effort as before.
It's implicitly assuming competence. The part where they stopped verifying blue-checked accounts at the same time they started charging for them is a level of stupidity that I didn't expect. I would have thought that charging for it means you can afford to pay for verification and do more of it at scale.
I guess they thought they could ban them later after they impersonated someone? That punishment after the fact would be good enough?
I know people predicted advertisers fleeing, and general social media moderation chaos, but I didn't see any predictions of chaos around paid verification moderation.
Did I miss something?
All the conversation I've seen before seemed to assume that "paid verification" actually includes verification, as in, some guy in a call center looks at your passport or something. They didn't introduce "verification", it's just a mark that shows you've paid a small amount of money. And they made it look like the person was actually verified.
I have trouble comprehending this but apparently that's because it actually is that stupid. If I had known the mechanics of the new "verification" mark beforehand than, yes, this would have been a concern to me.
Kind of like everyone assumed Auto-pilot would include some sort of automatic piloting?
With Musk demanding a paid verification in a week then firing whole teams, in hindsight... everyone seemed surprisingly optimistic about the whole "paid verification" thing. Me included.
I don't see where iteration comes in. Even without any testing it is obvious that if two things look identical, people will mistake one for the other. There's also no comprehensible reason for that one week deadline as far as I know, so I think it's safe to say the reasons remain incomprehensible.
Yes, it was rather surprising that Musk went with the stupidest possible version of this service. I had assumed that your name had to match the credit card, or maybe some ID.
Stripe charges $1.50 a person to verify ID. Couldn't they have gone with that? I guess it would require writing code and signing a contract.
(Yes, requiring real names is bad, but it would make sense for auto-verifying an account, and they could go with the existing system for processing exceptions.)
It seems like this is the kind of stuff that could really get Twitter into hot water. Even if they were somehow able to wean themselves off of advertising, the very quantifiable stock losses and brand defamation that can be tied to the platform might be a bit of an issue if anyone wants to make a legal thing of it. Starting to think Elon just wants Twitter for the insurance money or something.
Yes, but I humbly counter that it's hilarious and makes me disappointed that I didn't think of it myself. Tanking an evil pharmaceutical company's stock by tens of millions might be the best damn use of $8 there is, and the person behind it deserves a medal.
I wonder if he bought Twitter primarily to bring Trump back. Then he owns the communication medium the former president uses to listen to and speak to his followers. That’s especially powerful if he gets re-elected.
He did just fire the privacy and compliance people. Maybe he wants control over what specific people see?
I've always wondered that too.
I think it is unlikely to be the primary reason.
Musk simply stated his reason for buying Twitter was he felt it was badly run and undervalued.
The timelines back that up.
I think it would be funny if Musk allowed Trump back on to twitter at this point. In a very black humor sort of way.
Recently, the Republican establishment is pushing DeSantis. The more educated Republicans are suddenly realizing that Trumps hateful ideology is hurtful to their party.
If Trump gets back on Twitter, it might get him elected again, but it might just tear the Republican Party in two.
Minor correction to part 1: 2001 should be 2021.
This is the best possible outcome. Ideally split so that neither will win any serious elections for a few years until all the DINOs hop over.
If Musk were smart he'd charge admission. Nobody gets to interact with Trump without paying.
I think he bought it to quite literally buy popularity and attention. "Undervalued" might actually be correct, because attention is really valuable in today's day and age. Also, I imagine he's pretty bored having enough money to buy nearly anything, being the #1 globally-discussed topic isn't something you can buy in a store (though as this saga shows, it is something you can buy).
It also partially explains why this paid verification was so obviously flawed: it was by design to get satire accounts and controversy.
I feel like we need to be a bit more cautious about "This is what Musk intended all along". Perhaps he is an evil genius and wants this chaos. But it's also likely that he's dumb and lucky, and he's just making dumb mistakes. Very rich people normally surround themselves with smart people to take care of stuff (he's not an employment lawyer, so he pays for good employment lawyers to handle that stuff). Except Musk just fired a bunch of people from Twitter, so he got rid of many of his protective smart people.
I feel like people don't appreciate how stupidly rich Musk is, which leads them to analyze his acquisition as though it were some rational financial decision. Last I checked (at least prior to this acquisition), Musk was worth something like 100 billion dollars. He's not just among the wealthiest people in the world; by most measures, he's effectively infinitely rich. 1
So sure, if we had access to 50 billion dollars, most of us would probably spend it more carefully. But 50 billion dollars is only like half of his net worth, and half of infinity is still infinity, so he still remains effectively infinitely rich. I don't think Musk acquired Twitter to make a profit. I think he acquired Twitter because he's a Twitter addict, and unlike other Twitter addicts who have ideas but no means to effect them, Musk has ideas and a stupid amount of money he can't fathomably exhaust even if he were to order a new super yacht every year for the rest of his life.
1 Of course, being worth 100 billion dollars is not the same as having access to 100 billion dollars. I don't think this really undermines my thesis, however: Musk can afford to be reckless so long as it doesn't undermine his other ventures (Tesla, SpaceX, etc).
He's rich, arrogant, and out of touch, but if he weren't worried about the money, he wouldn't have tried so hard to get out of it.
I think the miscalculation is that he didn't think there could be a contract that he couldn't somehow get out of.
True, but apparently he'd rather commit to a 50 billion dollar mistake than be scrutinized by the Delaware chancery court. I don't think it was likely that they would have forced the deal to completion? Or maybe he just committed a the multibillion dollar sunken cost fallacy, preferring to squander some 50 billion dollars for Twitter than a few billion in fines/fees for nil?
My understanding (based largely on Matt Levine’s writing) is that he was likely to lose in court regardless. The court would then order the merger to go through and he’d legally be required to do it. (The billion dollar breakup fee doesn’t apply.)
The contract was properly written and if it didn’t hold up then anyone with a merger agreement they didn’t like anymore could get off the hook with quite flimsy arguments.
My personal conspiracy theory is he bought the company just to get access to all the sensitive user information on their servers.
Elon Musk Picks a Fight With the Wrong Senator (RollingStone)
I think this buyout was at best an elaborate shitpost that cost Musk dearly and at worst his attempt to manipulate the stock market for his own personal gain.
He agreed to the deal then tried to renege on it, arguing that Twitter failed to disclose information about bots and fake accounts. Musk has now ironically paved the way for fake accounts and disinformation to flourish. It's so bad that Eli Lilly's stock plummeted due to a fake tweet announcing that insulin would be free.
Twitter Blue was a good idea in theory but making it synonymous with and indistinguishable from the actual verification process was a shitshow waiting to happen. Who in their right mind will want to advertise on Twitter moving forward after this?