Wow. It has been a very annoying 24 or so hours on Twitter, and considering most days on Twitter are annoying in general, for the last day to stand out you KNOW it’s bad. And it’s mainly because a bunch of self-centered, self-important, insecure, famous people thinks they shouldn’t have to pay for their verification. Note, it’s not about the amount Elon Musk wants to charge … it’s that he would DARE charge THEM. It’s ok for him to charge the little people who aren’t as important as they are (Bette Midler actually claimed she ‘gives’ Twitter some great material), but if he wants to treat them as equals to those little people?
HE’S LITERALLY HITLER.
I’m only sort of joking because a journalist actually compared Musk removing blue checks from journalists to what Hitler and the Nazis did.
See what I mean? REALLY stupid 24 hours.
I snagged a bunch of the meltdowns:
Tucker Carlson has a blue check. So does Sean Hannity and Elon Musk. The NAACP and NY Times don’t. I’m more than good being one of the latter.
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) April 21, 2023
Ok everyone. Twitter has removed my verification. I will no longer be posting on this app. Anyone who posts as me is an imposter. I wish you all well.
— jason alexander (@IJasonAlexander) April 21, 2023
Elon, deciding that I’m not me, I’m a fake, & obliging ME, who has contributed mightily to your platform, (at least until you “tweaked the algorithm & tanked my metrics”) to pay monthly because you don’t have enough money & you’re humiliated b/c everyone thinks you’re a pathetic
— bettemidler (@BetteMidler) April 21, 2023
See?
SHE WORKS AND SHE SLAVES FOR TWITTER AND WHAT THANKS DOES SHE GET?!
Holy cow.
So by revoking my blue check mark because I wouldn’t pay some arbitrary fee, someone can just be me and say a bunch of bullshit. Does that mean Twitter and @elonmusk are liable for defamation or identity theft or fraud?
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) April 20, 2023
Yeah, I wrote about Alyssa’s meltdown as a stand-alone because imagine thinking your identity is literally tied to Twitter. And c’mon, if she’s really that worried she can pay the $8. Pretty sure she can afford that. Maybe not?
Jokes aside, this is setting the stage for major potential harm when a natural disaster hits and no one knows what agencies, reporters, or outlets are real.
Not long ago we had major flash floods. We had to mobilize trusted info fast to save lives. Today just made that harder https://t.co/bAG8ayBTa6
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 20, 2023
She was actually fact-checked because these entities are verified in other ways.
What we’re witnessing is a temper tantrum from people who have been fooled into believing their opinions matter because of the way pre-Musk Twitter verified people. Originally, verification was for people in the media, and famous types who could verify and prove their identity to keep from being impersonated. That makes sense, right? But then Twitter started treating verification as a status symbol and only verifying certain people with certain political ideas and beliefs. There were people with 200 followers who said they hated Trump with blue checks but conservative accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers were denied. I think I applied for verification after joining Twitchy about three dozen times, and no matter how many stories, bylines, emails, or pieces of documentation I sent in (my boss even reached out to try and get it done), Twitter refused. They said I wasn’t notable enough, even though the 200-follower account who hated Trump was far less notable than me.
They ruined it, and the people screaming at Elon Musk are just too stupid to realize it.
