So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX **Threadbans in OP**

Yep, turns out Musk is giving the blue tick back to accounts with 1m+ followers, including accounts who never had the blue tick before, and accounts of dead people. Either that or Jamal Khashoggi really has subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified his phone number.

It's amazing how his whole argument opposing the blue tick system from the start was that it created a princes and paupers system, and yet everything he's done since, from the design and implementation of Twitter Blue, has made it far more of a princes and paupers system than ever before.

And now the argument about how it needs to change to a subscription model is gone, because by automatically giving the blue tick back to accounts with over 1m followers, you're giving all the benefits of Twitter Blue for free to the majority of accounts who could both easily pay the subscription fee or who use to Twitter the most to have gained such a following.

An exploding rocket is the highlight of Musk's week.

An unexpected but hilarious consequence of Musk requiring all advertisers to be verified

So it looks like simply changing your name removes the ticks handed out by elon, this back and forth is hilarious to watch.

He'll be removing them again tonight.

Interesting GDPR issue, with Musk stating that people have subscribed when they haven’t. Twitter has a legal obligation to present accurate information.

I wonder if anyone will make a formal complaint ?

There is a reason that Truth Social failed and well 4chan is probably running but no one outside of it cares about it. People don't really care for what a right wing echo chamber will become. Twitter will have less and less of an influence on public discourse as time goes on. This is why Elon has backtracked heavily on forcing left wing celebs to buy twitter blue and why right wing celebs are annoyed others won't pay for it. It has made them realise that people who have been successful for decades before twitter came along don't actually need twitter for their lives and without someone outside the right echo chamber twitter will just be Truth Social.

It’s incredible how ridiculous the whole blue tick thing has become.

Musk misunderstood the blue tick from day 1(legitimately or otherwise). It’s not a status symbol, it’s a feature for regular users to help them know that tue information they’re viewing is legitimate.

And, in true Musk fashion, the implementation of his version of it is completely ham-fisted. So now there’s people who’ve paid for blue ticks who were angry at this status “being kept by elitists” while Elon is treating celebrities differently by giving them the service for free. And of course you can see how ill thought out it is because it’s misrepresenting users who have been given the service, making it look like they subscribed themselves.

Its a complete mess, I honestly don’t see how anyone can look at his management of Twitter and think this is the guy that will make it an amazing service.

If they’re more talented than Jimmy Hendrix they’re not going to need his guitar to show it.

And paying for a blue tick doesn’t mean anyone cares about your tweets any more than they currently do. People follow who they want to follow and previously would use the blue tick to identify the real account.

Now a blue tick only means I pay for Twitter - people aren’t going to suddenly take everything said by a blue tick as gospel.

There are plenty of accounts on Twitter who made their fame through Twitter. They did it through insightful commentary or expert opinion on different topics, or being funny and gradually plugging away, building up their following over time. It is of course possible that there are accounts that have long gone unrecognised, still waiting for that one viral tweet to get them trending, get more followers etc.

But you're conflating "gatekeeping" with "recognition". The previous blue tick was only as worthy of recognition as each individual felt it was. Was an account worthy of following or paying attention to just because it had a blue tick? Of course not. Think about how many blue tick accounts there were on Twitter, then think about how many the average person would have followed.

Again, it's not the blue tick, it's the person. Some of my favourite accounts don't have and never had a blue tick. Some of the worst, most banal, boring accounts have blue ticks, because that's who the person is. And in some of the cases of accounts without a blue tick that I like, it was probably an account with a blue tick retweeting or mentioning them which brought them to my attention.

Now you have an actual literal gatekeeping system in place. If you don't pay for Twitter Blue, your tweets will be buried under everyone who did. That's literal gatekeeping.

No, that's not what gatekeeping means. You don't have any control over gatekeeping, but now you do have control over blue ticks. If you want your tweets promoted, you pay. The old way gave more reach to your tweets based on who you were, which is just as wrong and arbitrary as paying for, but at least now the decision is yours.

you dont sustain it by losing swathes of advertisers and trying to replace that with a subscription model that nobody wants.