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Comment by simonswords82 | Hacker News Reader

1. allow people to pay for a blue check to be verified

> Nobody is going to pay for something that is no longer a status symbol because it can simply be bought

2. make "twitter blue" actually valuable (e.g. detailed analytics on your followers, tools for composing threads, actually monetizing revue)

> Or just give people these metrics because if they care about them they probably care about creating quality and engaging content and seeing how well it performs.

3. payments

> Perhaps - but for what? I don't see myself going to Twitter, let alone to find something to buy and then pay for it using Twitter-dollars or whatever they dream up.

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1. allow people to pay for a blue check to be verified

> Nobody is going to pay for something that is no longer a status symbol because it can simply be bought

Tell that to all the luxury brands that make low-end products for everyone now. This is extremely naive. There is a price point where the blue checkmark will sell like wildfire, and then it's basically free money because there's no operational cost associated to it.

Let's say 5$/year for some kind of BS "verification" process that gives you a blue checkmark? Free money! Want to spend 20$/year for "extra-secure verification" to get a gold checkmark? FREE MONEY...

But what is the point of the blue checkmark? How does having it benefit a luxury brand? Am I missing something here?

I was arguing the point that "exclusivity that anyone can buy has less value" made by OP..

It most definitely does not, in the eyes of enough people to still be valuable. They will purchase the appearance of exclusivity, even if it's not actually that exclusive.

Of course there will be a minority of people who understand (and deride) the fake-exclusivity, but not enough for the blue checkmark to lose enough value.

Luxury brands have always made low end products for the petite bourgeoisie. Their products offerings are deliberate pyramids of increasing artificial scarcity which many clever people have wasted lives designing.

‘Just charge for the check mark’ seems quite likely to fail in the ways your interlocutor alludes. Moreover, this particular status symbol is explicitly not a marker of wealth, but rather of a more nebulous type of status.

Looks like I was partially right (but wrong on the price!)..

https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1586884530988027904

"nobody"? I'd pay, so it's not nobody.

it is obviously worth testing and requiring a small payment is a good way of verifying they are a real person (not a bot).

Curious - why would you pay for it?

I think there's value in having a verified online identity. A place someone could find out a good bit about how you think. Twitter seems like a pretty good place to do that.

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