Business Blue Check Confusion

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Blue Check Confusion​

Why Twitter changed its account verifications.

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Credit...Gregory Bull/Associated Press

By Madison Malone Kircher
April 30, 2023, 7:38 a.m. ET
I got my verified Twitter check mark about eight years ago while working as a cub reporter at a digital news outlet. I did nothing to earn it other than show up to work one day and Oh, hey, would you look at that! I’m verified. Sweet!
(Technically, the check mark was white, surrounded by blue, but colloquially they’ve become known as blue checks and I’m not about to squabble over semantics now.)
It feels a little pathetic to reflect on how excited I was about getting a check mark, but that was still the era when digital journalism was fighting to be taken seriously. Getting that check, which denoted that Twitter had confirmed the identity of the account’s owner and operator, gave me credibility.
Last week, after much throat clearing, Twitter started removing the check marks from previously verified accounts whose users had declined to pay a fee — which was most of them. Now, anyone can be “verified” on Twitter. It’ll cost you $8 a month and comes with basically none of the usefulness that verification used to offer because Twitter is no longer confirming that people are who they say they are.

The change in verification is one of the most visible effects that Elon Musk has had on Twitter since he bought it last year. Information on the platform, once considered indispensable for following breaking news, has become increasingly unreliable. And for users who rely on Twitter to follow celebrities or other figures, the verification change is part of a shift that will make many prominent users less visible because they declined to pay to retain their check marks.
By the time Musk announced that all previously verified users would be losing their status, a blue check was nothing to be proud of. Some users are now calling it “the dreaded mark” or that “stinking badge,” my colleagues Callie Holtermann and Lora Kelley reported last week.
The icon makes its owner appear “desperate for validation,” according to the rapper Doja Cat. Twitter also restored blue checks for popular users who didn’t want them, including LeBron James, Bette Midler and Stephen King. The model and internet personality Chrissy Teigen called her blue check a form of “punishment.”
I would argue that the blue check was never as covetable as Musk thought it was. (He has called it a “lords & peasants system.”) For me and many other journalists, it was essentially just a tool to prove to sources I was who I said I was. No different than a press badge or a business card.
Why should anyone care about the check mark changes, especially if their job doesn’t involve sliding into DMs? Twitter’s check mark system wasn’t perfect, but it did make it easier for users to figure out if tweets were coming from a real person or organization, or from, say, an account pretending to be Eli Lilly and promising free insulin for all. (This really happened in November 2022, tanking the company’s stock.)

Now users will have to work harder to make sure people are who they purport to be. I can attest that it’s harder than it sounds.
But that’s not to say Musk’s new system isn’t useful in its own way. The new check marks have instead become an inversion of the old. If I see you have one, I immediately don’t care what you have to say.

 

[Watcher]

I like how these people say Twitter is a private company and can do whatever it wants when it bans someone on the right over freedom of speech. But as soon as it removes a jpg of a checkmark from accounts and requires you pay them monthly for it they see it as ridiculous.

 

[Not A Bunny]

The angst over even the use of Twitter just blows my mind.

Like, all of these celebrities announcing they're leaving Twitter because Elon Musk bought it.

Basically the world arbitrarily agreed that Twitter was "important".

And then the world said it wasn't so "important" when the wrong person controlled it.

Almost as if people hate free speech unless it's what they agree with to get around pesky things like legalities and morality. As long as the person who set the rules for Twitter agreed with them, we were all secure and the world wasn't going to hell.

 

[Watcher]

Almost as if people hate free speech unless it's what they agree with to get around pesky things like legalities and morality. As long as the person who set the rules for Twitter agreed with them, we were all secure and the world wasn't going to hell.

These people only wield free speech as a cudgel if it benefits them. They don't care for it at all philosophically and if they were able to draft a new constitution they'd deliberately remove it altogether. It's similar to how they also see "company rights" as sacred only if they're politically in favor of the same things as them.

 

[sum ting wong]

once considered indispensable for following breaking news, has become increasingly unreliable.

The best thing Elon did was keep the fact check but let it be community driven. I'll never stop laughing at some journalist or government official who posts some obviously false shit and there's a giant box underneath saying 'readers added context' that completely ruins their argument. Then they respond to that and it happens again.

 

[Haramburger]

This woman is a liar or a bad researcher, probably both.Old checkmarks/verification came with a host of premium features in filtering incoming tweets tagging you/DMs. It wasn't just identity verification, it literally added functionality for people they assumed would be more high traffic. Additionally a bunch of connected libtards who didn't do journalism got checkmark, like Zoe Quinn. It was a reward handed out to lefty darlings, lefties who wanted to be darling but instead paid a fat bribe, and finally a handful of conservatives just for appearances. There was no true process for verification and it was a dirty open secret that getting one had nothing to do with fairness or merit.

Elon was right to dismantle the old checkmark, it was a literal symbol of corruption and disfunction in the app.

 

[Wallace]

This woman is a liar or a bad researcher, probably both.Old checkmarks/verification came with a host of premium features in filtering incoming tweets tagging you/DMs. It wasn't just identity verification, it literally added functionality for people they assumed would be more high traffic. Additionally a bunch of connected libtards who didn't do journalism got checkmark, like Zoe Quinn. It was a reward handed out to lefty darlings, lefties who wanted to be darling but instead paid a fat bribe, and finally a handful of conservatives just for appearances. There was no true process for verification and it was a dirty open secret that getting one had nothing to do with fairness or merit.

Elon was right to dismantle the old checkmark, it was a literal symbol of corruption and disfunction in the app.

They loved it for the social capital it granted them. A blue checkmark was a status symbol. It meant you were important. "Free speech" is just another purr word that gets trotted out to try and make their hypocritical argument look better.

 

[Megaton Punch]

I like how these people say Twitter is a private company and can do whatever it wants when it bans someone on the right over freedom of speech. But as soon as it removes a jpg of a checkmark from accounts and requires you pay them monthly for it they see it as ridiculous.

"They can do whatever they want" is, 100% of the time, code for "my side is in control and I find your suffering funny". Nobody ever says it about a company that's being run by the Other Side.

 

[Rei is Shit.]

"I got my verified Twitter check mark about eight years ago.... but that was still the era when digital journalism was fighting to be taken seriously."

These people are so fucking full of themselves holy shit. About 8 years ago was 2015 but she acts like it was 1995.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Lets use lefty math and budget advice; $8 a month is equal to one Starbucks...a month.

Just pay the money you tight-fisted skin flints.

 

[Wallace]

Lets use lefty math and budget advice; $8 a month is equal to one Starbucks...a month.

Just pay the money you tight-fisted skin flints.

It's not about the money. It's about how unwashed plebs like you and I can buy the same status symbol that was once exclusive to cool people like the author. Ever read the Dr. Seuss story The Sneetches?

 

[Toolbox]

And madassed twitter retards have already made auto-blocklists to block anyone with this checkmark just the same as they do for anyone they ideologically disagree with. I don't know why anyone that doesn't need to use the site uses it. It's only good for advertising and even then you get poisoned.