How Twitter devalued its top status symbol and what it can do now | Hacker News Reader

How Twitter devalued its top status symbol and what it can do now

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47 pointsoldschoolib87 comments

The whole screwup stems from the bizarre misconception that the blue checkmark was some mark of prestige, rather than just "this person has a public-facing job and we've verified their identity".

Until you untangle the confusion there, you can't design a product that makes any sense.

I think Twitter made that mess themselves. I know of many public figures (many YouTubers) who attempted verification just to be shot down for reasons that aren't related to ID verification. Others would get it no problem.

Yes, but Elon didn't solve that problem. Imo the correct move would have been to open up verification for everyone. Demanding a one time fee for verification (20-50USD?) would make sense, since this creates work. Then add a different checkmark or whatever for Twitter Premium.

> Imo the correct move would have been to open up verification for everyone.

Well, the correct move would be to actual verify people. Just taking their money means nothing.

Sure, that is what I meant. Otherwise it's not verification anymore (and the new Twitter Blue isn't).

Truth, this was a pre-Elon Twitter thing, they should have opened up verfication for everyone. I had no idea if I was debating a bot, a paid anonymous account or a genuine real person. If I was in a park talking to a random person, I could see that they are real. On Twitter, I can't do that. So I end up not even putting the time in, because I don't know if they are real.

Verification for everyone makes no sense to me. I don't care if @JohnSmith is the John Smith from Seattle, or the John Smith from Miami, or the John Smith from anywhere else, especially since there are likely more than one John Smith in each of those cities. The only reason to care is if the figure is in some way notable, which was the point.

It turns out to be important to know which is the official Eli Lilly account, and at some point it was deemed important to know who was a news reporter, rather than someone attempt to trade on the reputation of a newspaper to support their own opinions.

Verifying everyone is definitely missing the point of verification.

> The whole screwup stems from the bizarre misconception that the blue checkmark was some mark of prestige, rather than just "this person has a public-facing job and we've verified their identity".

The misconception was coming from inside the building. Ostensibly the blue check was a security feature, but it was also used as a positive signal when ranking content. Blue users could also see a separate notification feed of only other Blue users. And so on.

> it was also used as a positive signal when ranking content

This is (in my opinion) why they slowed down verifications to a crawl, because they realized it shouldn't necessarily lead to boosted importance, and that it certainly wouldn't scale if they opened up identity verification to everyone instead of just "famous people".

So like every other half-baked feature that remained only partially rolled out for years, or features that were briefly available and then were hidden altogether, they just sat on it in fear of making any changes at all.

The blue checkmark was not just that. Having it completely altered the way one interacted with Twitter. There was a checkbox to hide all posts from people who did not have one. It was an entirely different class of service.

I am pretty sure that will be by default soon with Twitter blue too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/28/elon-musk-says-only-verified...

There was a notification feed tab to filter notifications to “verified only” (which ironically has lost almost all use as spam and low quality accounts make up the majority of blue checks now), but there was never a way to filter your feed to “Verified Only” — though Elon recently tweeted he plans to create such a ‘feature’, and forcefully roll it out to everyone’s “For You” feed so even unverified users will only see verified tweets in that feed.

If we are talking about Obama, then sure, let's make it hard for people to impersonate him. But what happens when you get down to some guy with a YouTube channel and 10k subscribers. Does he have a public facing job? What if he only had 100 subscribers?

It becomes an arbitrary status symbol eventually.

In those cases it was about risk of impersonation. Plenty of people who weren't "famous" still had enough of an audience that it was profitable for some crypto-hawking spammer to imitate them and try to con their audience.

That basically happened to me. Modest number of followers but enough for the crypto-grifters to spam.

It it were just like that, then having blue status won’t give boost in recommendations. It does though (hard to say since when though)

They could have added gold checkmarks instead with additional features and whatnot, because the two are not mutually exclusive. But instead they chose to capitalise on the prestige that the blue checkmarks already had, thereby devaluating the whole concept. It’s a really weird choice if you ask me.

The now also have gray checkmarks for government agencies and golden checkmarks... for something

Gold checkmarks are for brands, which Twitter reportedly wants $1000/month for. So basically, they're like Twitter Blue, except not for poor people.

The Cadillac Cimarron of the tech world.

> this person has a public-facing job

Well there you go, that's a status symbol in our society. A recognizable face or name, at least in their field, is the ultimate strive for many people.

It's not just Twitter the company. It's often the users as well.

I've seen a bunch of people basically bent out of shape because Twitter essentially didn't see them as important enough, based on whatever arbitrary algorithm, to give them a blue check.

I was also turned down in spite of having an impersonation attempt (which I did get banned) and writing publicly on a regular basis. I didn't really care but I understand that some do. I doubt I'd pay a monthly fee so long as the site was generally usable.

I totally agree with this opinion by Tim Sweeney, and think that it’s a net benefit for all, but previously blue status owners.

” Twitter only verifying elites and friends of Twitter employees was wrong. Democratizing verification for $8 was good. Treating everyone the same is principled. What kind of company sells a product but gives it to elites for free? That's just weird thing to do.

I don’t want to be verified unless the verification process is opened up to everyone on equal terms. Right now it’s a system for doling our favors to friends of Twitter and for using revocation to punish people Twitter doesn’t like.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/16426416438...

The thing is there could easily be 1,000 people named Tim Sweeney in the US. The point of the blue checkmark is that the person tweeting is the famous Tim Sweeney. Not that they have a license that says they are Tim Sweeney.

It's literally only valuable if your name is valuable, and you are the famous person with that name.

The point of the blue checkmark, to both Twitter and their users, is to make the platform more valuable.

Previously it was used to give more confidence that someone is famous. That worked.

Now, it's changing purposes, but it makes as much if not more sense. You lose a bit of ability to tell who is famous, but in exchange you get more significant bot and spam prevention as well a less advertiser dependent revenue model.

> You lose a bit of ability to tell who is famous, but in exchange you get more significant bot and spam prevention as well a less advertiser dependent revenue model.

People who want to spam a cryptocurrency fraud will make a lot more than even a year's worth of Twitter Blue. Phone number verification is insufficient, you need to tie to a real world, unique identity to prevent spam.

And, Twitter has 450 million monthly active users (by some estimates - very hard to tell with how volatile the user base has been over the last few months). If you took an optimistic 1% conversion ratio for $100/yr subscriptions (typical freemium uptake metrics), that is $110 million dollars a quarter revenue.

Twitter used to get $1 bil in advertising revenue for quarter, which would still mean 90% of their revenue would come from advertising.

Unfortunately - estimates are that they have lost between 70 and 89% of their advertising revenue, the uptake for Twitter Blue is estimated to be well below 1%, and the leveraged buyout added a billion dollars of additional interest Twitter owes a year.

There's a general decline in advertising revenue, but some (such as myself) suspect the major brands looked at the volatility of Twitter and decided to target a disproportionate amount of their cuts there.

Phone number plus credit card is pretty strong, being two scarce resources combined.

They've only just begun to roll it out, are you assuming they will have 0 future growth only a few months into launching? Not only that, but the benefits of verifying have slowly ratcheted up, and with the algorithm now showing clear benefit I'd expect sharp growth.

Finally, why bring their revenue into this? That's a totally separate conversation. I'd be happy to have it, but not really related to whether this alternative verification scheme makes sense.

I brought revenue into it because you claimed that they got a new less advertiser-dependent revenue model. I argue that the mix of a healthy Twitter monetizing advertising and paid individual user accounts would still be 90% advertising.

Eh, I think you can tie the name to the bio for a blue check mark.

If some guy from Alabama is named Tim Sweeney it seems perfectly reasonable for them to be verified as Tim Sweeney, CEO of Alabama Woodworking Inc.

Like for India, how low in the cabinet do you allow a blue checkmark? Is it the same level as the US? By just making it about verification it solves the problem. If the persons Name + Bio isn't unique enough to identify them then they don't get a blue check.

That might work, although people are clumsy about looking up things online. But I doubt most people have distinct enough bios to qualify. Certainly not enough to have the majority of people able to pay $8/month.

You can change your bio. Twitter would either have to lock them at the time of verification, or have moderators approve every change.

I would pair it with a bio lock or something along those lines.

I mean its pretty ridiculous you can get verified and then change the description of who you are and has led to issues in the past where people change themselves to companies/celebrities and promote some crypto currency scams [1].

[1]: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/an-8-mess-twi...

No, identity verification is good for everyone regardless of fame. Basically it means a John Smith can’t be Tim Sweeney. The likelihood of Tim Sweeney impersonating another Tim Sweeney is remote.

> The likelihood of Tim Sweeney impersonating another Tim Sweeney is remote.

For $100 you can legally become Tim Sweeney. Or Adele. Pretty much anything non-profane.

Alternatively, you have things backwards. The odds that any Tim Sweeney would want to specifically imitate Epic's Tim Sweeney is remote. However, once they can, it only takes one to cause chaos. He might not be their first choice to emulate, but they know that they can. Or someone can seek them out.

Imagine shorting NVIDIA and then having a Tim Sweeney tweet that Epic will require Radeon cards for the best graphics.

There are multiple people named Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Think of just offering them the option to create chaos either because they want to or because someone offers them a bribe.

Besides all that, I have no idea why identity verification is good for everyone. A lot of people would prefer to be pseudonymous.

So…for John Smith to impersonate Tim Sweeney on Twitter he needs to spend $100, go in front of a judge to petition a name change, change his name on everything else in his life, including all sorts of documents, policies, ids, passports, etc…creating a huge legal paper trail (that will cost a ton of money) then spend another $8 a month just to get a blue check to make snide comments on a social media platform? Seems like a fair amount of effort just to impersonate and troll IMO, probably not worth the effort.

Also, in the case of a Tim Sweeney impersonating another Tim Sweeney and wrecking havoc there are some big statistical hurdles to overcome. You need to be a Tim Sweeney, you need to be familiar with another famous Tim Sweeney, you need to want to wreck havoc in a way that only The Tim Sweeney can, and you need to be dumb enough to think you will get away with it. Seems remote.

> A lot of people would prefer to be pseudonymous. Ok. So don’t pay the $8/mo for identity verification on Twitter. Problem solved.

> You need to be a Tim Sweeney

No, you need to find a Tim Sweeney who is willing to help you out. If there's money involved, it's pretty doable. You can get the real influencers to tweet about your product for a not-insane sum. I imagine the cheapest person who shares a famous name isn't that expensive.

Meanwhile, you don't have to get away with it for long. Not that it it seems there is anything to "get away with". Does it violate any rules for a non-Epic CEO Tim Sweeney to talk about how much he hates NVIDIA's new cards?

You just added more statistical complexity to the scenario, so not only do you need to be willing to take on all that risk and effort to impersonate another person, but you also need to recruit someone with the same name who is willing to undertake the scheme with you?

The things is, Twitter needs those "elites" (which include many non-elite journalists and government agencies) more than those elites need Twitter.

Those "elites" generated content for the website for free driving users to the website. And all in exchange for a verified status.

I don’t understand why as a user I would want that everyone is treated the same. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because the whole point of those verification badges was to mark the “famous” in their space. If anything the fix would have been to give this thing out to fewer, not more people.

Now it definitely has no utility at all any more.

Going forward it is more of a mark that you are human rather than a bot because the explosion in llms/spam.

The point of the verification badges was like swag at the oscars. It was perks for VIPs and that is what induced the celebrities to get on the platform originally.

If you just want Twitter to be a space for famous people, hack politicians and hack journalists, influencers, to hang out like a red carpet party with everybody else gawking at them... well yeah, you'd want to keep the old way.

That also means a citizen journalist with accurate information gets to shout into the void whereas a hack who called in a favor from a friend who works at Twitter gets a megaphone.

Do you like the system where normies get locked out of their Google accounts and have to come here or beg on Twitter for a googler to do them a solid? Not to mention that the checkmarked got to use the app with exclusive features and a better experience?

Why support a caste system? This way a NYT journalist is still marked as affiliated with the NYT, just with a different icon or exclusive perks.

Not sure why a bot would be verified nor do i think that there is much of value to tell humans and bots apart. Some of the most spammy or vile content comes from actual humans.

Since it costs $8 and requires a credit card it will be much harder (not impossible) to spin up many spammy bots. You could still have good bots.

Without paying for the checkmark the spammy bots/humans will have limited reach. Hopefully there will be less vile content in the future as a result. If not I'm sure they'll try something else.

>Now it definitely has no utility at all any more.

Which is good in the long run. The blue check is like the https padlock. People mistakenly think that it implies security, which it doesn't. Twitter has essentially become a CA within its domain. And gold = EV validation.

> The blue check is like the https padlock. People mistakenly think that it implies security, which it doesn't.

It sure does.

For instance, you cannot make a secure request to a domain that is using a different name from the one in the TLS certificate it is serving, e.g. a domain like "gobble.com" serving a certificate issued for "google.com", will be seen as insecure.

Same could have happened with the blue check. Now it is meaningless.

If they actually verified identity documents then it would make more sense. Looks like Stripe will do it for a one-time fee of $1.50, so surely Twitter could do it for $8 a month.

Charging a credit card doesn’t verify identity, but it does make creating spam accounts more expensive in bulk. It seems hard to explain that benefit to users, though, particularly at the price they’re charging for it.

>What kind of company sells a product but gives it to elites for free?

This is strange; the "elites"* in this case create the content. You want the "elites" on the platform otherwise your lurkers, who make up 90% of the DAU will have nothing to read.

The benefit is murky here; blue checks were a proxy for status, "democratizing" blue checks doesn't democratize status. No one is anymore inclined to follow me because I bought a blue check like Kim Kardashian.

* I use "elites" here to match the language, but I think calling Twitter bluechecks "elites" is most laughable, crybaby label perpetuated by a CEO who needs to be liked by everybody.

>You want the "elites" on the platform otherwise your lurkers, who make up 90% of the DAU will have nothing to read.

I don't think this is even true. I know the stats you're talking about on posters vs lurkers, but that's orthogonal to blue checks. I can't imagine there was a high percentage of blue checks that got one via being notable on Twitter itself.

Ex: Can you name anyone on tiktok you'd have considered notable before the app blew up? Yet it is the hottest social media platform out there. These people are largely replaceable.

>Can you name anyone on tiktok you'd have considered notable before the app blew up?

I don't think you are giving enough credit to TikTok here. TikTok was able to break into the space using algorithmic discovery; they didn't need to spend a ton on content and were able to surface content people want to watch.

That said, verification came out in 2009, three years after the launch of Twitter itself.

I'm giving all the credit to the tiktok platform by saying the addition of the "elites" wouldn't have made any difference. They can build up people organically. They don't have to pander to the traditional elites at all.

I might have been missing the point of your post though. I thought it was saying that you want the elites whereas I'm saying they don't really matter if you can make discoverability on your platform decent.

>What kind of company sells a product but gives it to elites for free?

So many companies do this. Clothing and sports companies are the first that spring to mind.

> What kind of company sells a product but gives it to elites for free?

Lots of them? Fancy hotels comp rooms for influencers in exchange for posts about where they went. Nominees get $50k worth of swag at the Oscars. Cops get free coffee at a lot of places. Kids with big YouTube followings get free toys to "unbox". Elites get all sorts of free shit.

> What kind of company sells a product but gives it to elites for free?

The kind of company that makes money off the elites.

Sweeney is missing the point by a mile here. The verification check was not the "product", content and users are. Having it was also not a matter of money or prestige, it was a way of telling who were persons or organizations of public interest.

Now it has become meaningless. If anything, it is more expensive now, so who benefits from this? Not the masses, that's for sure.

All it verifies is that you spend $96/year for a sticker.

Sweeny doesn't understand how Twitter works. Blue Checkmarks are not the product!

Tweets by people other people want to read are thr product! Twitter managed to convince hundreds, thousands of incredibly famous and notable people to produce content for Twitter _for free_

A quite unbelievable achievement. The world's top comedian's saying funny things for free every day. Industry titans giving their view on business every day, for free. Worlds greatest scientists, historians, geologists etc, just pumping out world class knowledge for free. Every. Single. Hour. Of. Every. Single. Day.

Blue Checkmarks help users navigate the sea of tweets to find the content they are looking for. Lehacy Blue Checkmarks help users consume the product. They are not the product.

> Democratizing verification for $8 was good.

It's not "democratizing" verification, it's just selling it.

You agree with Tim Sweeney on repeatedly using the word "verification" and him ignoring what the word actually means?

Sweeney seems to have missed the fact that Twitter still doesn't treat everyone the same. Checkmarks are still free for Twitter's "top 500 advertisers and for the 10,000 most-followed organizations that have been previously verified":

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/technology/elon-musk-ftc-...

I would also argue that having the same price in every country isn't treating everyone the same, since the value of $8 differs greatly from country to country. And that is something Sweeney should be well aware of, since he made a point of having regional pricing in the Epic Games Store.

Watching the blue checkmark as status symbol die in front of me has been immensely enjoyable. It only mattered because Twitter itself existed in a bubble of cultural relevance, propped up by journalists. That bubble is deflating slowly, and has been for awhile. If the checkmark actually represented something of value, it wouldn't be so easily wiped out.

One day, I hope we can laugh at the era of big social media, where we honestly believed that the most addicted users posting furiously on sites merited similar cultural prestige as people actually doing things out in the world, such as building things, researching, competing, or caring for people.

> people actually doing things out in the world

Those were the people who were previously verified? I.E. they were notable enough to a _large enough cross section of twitter users_ in some way shape or form.

Sure, members of the media were given a check as a directive of public-facing policy and thus over-represented, but considering they actually _reported_ on events happening (including things that wouldn’t be so unfiltered on cable news or newspapers, but live feeds and videos of events in real-time, like the 2011 Egyptian Revolution), I personally thought it made sense they too were boosted by the algorithm.

Now every other blue check I see is someone shilling an ICO (in 2023?) or someone I don’t follow responding something transphobic/racist/whatever to someone else I also don’t follow.

I’ve been on Twitter since 2011. I’ve seen it change even under the old ownership. I thought the blue check feature was flawed in the past (in fact, it should’ve been MORE stringent), but now I just find it actively diluting the entire experience.

I really don’t care what ANON1234 with 8 followers thinks about covid vaccines just because they paid $8, and I don’t think most other users do either.

The only reason people are buying a checkmark is because of the cultural relevance the checkmark had. If they just rolled out a "Twitter Plus" subscription and gave users a different looking symbol, it would have nose dived even harder.

Now that cultural relevance has been muddled, now any random person can get one. So it's lost value for people who actually need verification as a security / fraud feature and for journalists and for the people paying for one.

Blue Checkmark before Musk: "This is not some rando"

Blue Checkmark during Musk: "Ah, another rando culture warrior that paid $8"

What's immensely enjoyable is seeing Free Speech Absolutists flood to the new Blue Checkmark, only to realize that it's now completely meaningless.

Mission accomplished! Blue Checkmark destroyed! Take that, establishment!

Except that the "legacy" Blue Checkmarks are moving to Notes, and it has the actual Blue Checkmarks - again.

What makes the blue checkmark now look so bad is they are boosting tweets based on it, so the whole notion of twitter as a democratic free speech platform has just been flushed down the toilet. Twitter is now biased in favor of those who can afford $100+/yr to get their opinions heard, which unfortunately for many American families is a big deal.

It also makes people who pay for it look a bit desperate for attention - for that extra boost.

I feel muzzled! Free speech SOMETHING SOMETHING [INSERT FAKE OUTRAGE] oh wait I don't care...

Sure - plenty of other places to talk other than Musk's living room, but still a shame to see it get destroyed given lack of any real alternative. It did/does provide some value.

One thing Twitter might have tried would have been to allow users to pay $8 to unlock high quality API access for any apps they want to use. Serious and professional Twitter users likely want to use more advanced tooling than Twitter offers to manage their own accounts. Let them pay for premium service.

Integration developers could then develop advanced features at no cost to themselves (other than developer time), and their users could pay Twitter to enable them.

Of course, Twitter has already mostly burned that bridge by devaluing the API.

The comment section here is mostly a trash heap. Please respond to the article and not post random attacks.

I thought this article was really clear and succinct and has lessons for any company selling to a luxury market. I can totally see how Lulu's vision for the blue check would have been successful, even if it didn't result in a major revenue stream for the company.

Interesting theory and I can see this occurring, and I may expand upon this by thinking eventually the only ones that will have the checkmark are ad companies. In that case I can see people trying to figure out how to filter out tweets from entities with the checkmark.

Or you can try not to be so thin skinned losing sleep over a few internet warriors laughing at you

People on Twitter think Twitter is the most important thing in the Universe. They think the state of the Universe rises and falls with it. It's merely the Universe of the perpetually online.

What kind of odds are people thinking for the New York Times signing back up for a checkmark in the next year or so.

90% 95% 99%?

It's a really funny hill for them to die on and it will look horrible when they cave.

> It's a really funny hill for them to die on and it will look horrible when they cave.

“They” being twitter, or NYT?

I don’t understand the game Elon is playing with them; why would they even want to be verified now that it doesn’t serve any verification purpose except to prove that they have $8/month to spend on verification.

Twitter wants to sell enterprise subscriptions to enterprises. The feature set will be refined and segmented over time. What game is NY-I-will-detect-incognito-Times to show ads and limit access playing here ?

> The feature set will be refined and segmented over time.

What is the current feature set that they would now be paying for? Not what is promised, what is currently delivered.

> doesn’t serve any verification purpose

But once it serves a signal boosting purpose, it may start to really matter to organizations like the NY Times.

Because it’s a way to buy algorithmic preference, the blue check has already subconsciously taken on the same association in my brain that “promoted” at the bottom of a tweet has.

If more notable accounts drop the check, and more grifters buy in for the algorithmic preference, it wouldn’t surprise me if the signaling value of the check goes negative. (Currently my “for you” tab is full of linkedin-quality posts from blue check accounts)

> I don’t understand the game Elon is playing with them; why would they even want to be verified now that it doesn’t serve any verification purpose except to prove that they have $8/month to spend on verification.

I'm sure Twitter will move important account functions behind the paywall soon, especially for things that businesses need. There will probably be a business-specific higher tier that's needed as well.

Hopefully companies will resist this.

It would be $1,000/month for NYT to have a badge, not $8. And $50 per employee.

Sounds like you have a strong opinion. Good news: You can now put your (fake) money where your mouth is: https://manifold.markets/Shai/will-the-new-york-times-be-ver...

I’ll take that bet

It. Is. Not. A. Status. Symbol.

It. Was. A. Status. Symbol; Not. Any. More.

It shouldn't be a status symbol, but a useful utility instead.

Now it's neither. Worst of both worlds.

Only someone who is an idiot who doesn't understand how Twitter works thinks it was a status symbol.

Elon Musk thought it was a status symbol. See my first sentence.

Its purpose was to let tweet readers know they were reading a verified account. That's it.

It. Is. A. Cash. Grab.

The fact that I could find, prior to Musk, fairly famous people who were refused blue checks whereas I'd see 'literal who' journalists made it clear the verification system was politically biased. People mad at Twitter 'Blue' are primarily mad that this bias went away.

Not that this goes too far against what the article is stating, but the headline at least: many of us thought that the blue check was de facto already devalued when you'd find blue checks you'd never heard of who write for Kotaku or some other bullshit outlet.

That was because Twitter gave them out en mass as a marketing ploy (growth hacking.) They literally gave them out to every newsroom for every writer, using the media outlets themselves as marketing engines to get their writers to post content. And the journalists and politicos all being on there made Twitter relevant. So it was a nice network effect.

Now we understand that the whole thing is social media hell. Just looking in the feed occasionally makes you so depressed about humanity. (But it is all performative as it really affects my life zero.)

There was a funny video a few years back about this exact ploy https://youtu.be/ni8CpIJpmqw

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