Twitter power users begin campaign to 'Block the Blue' paid checkmarks
mashable.com
mashable.com
I’ve found that I end up blocking accounts that I would have otherwise (weird culture warrior nonsense, low-quality Facebook meme reposts, an astounding number of people claiming that everyone spends $8/day on coffee etc.) and the check mark just makes them stand out visually along with putting their posts at the top of threads. Heck, until they disabled it there was even an entire tab of folks to block in my notifications section.
Kudos!
The rate of new users who don't subscribe to twitter blue will likely remain a much higher fraction than those that do, so if blocking them improves the experience, then rigging up an automatic block seems like a fairly low effort way to tidy things up. Naturally, you'll end up blocking a large amount of cryptobro posters due to the obvious overlap with Elon's supporter audience, which may be beneficial or detrimental depending on what communities you prefer.
You can also simply hide all bluecheck posts with a ublock filter or a userscript, but that's more of a blunt hammer solution, and a bit janky depending on how new tweet loading and infinite scroll is working that day.
Paying for the internet and social media is gonna happen one way or another, and the truth is, twitter provides just as much entertainment as films, tv and books, so I think it's warranted.
To quote Nassim Taleb, "The sad truth is that, under near zero interest rates, it was not the advertisers who were paying for much of your social media & internet services, but investors."
I got that quote from twitter btw.
While investors may be paying for the infrastructure, it's the old blue-checks who were providing the value. The site needs both -- lose the infrastructure, you've got nothing; lose the value, lose the investors.
As I understand it from the article: > But, @dril is far from the only big Twitter user to follow this new unwritten "Block the Blue" rule on the platform. NBC News reporter Ben Collins, Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic's Alejandra Caraballo, and countless other highly-followed Twitter accounts have already shared their intention to block all Twitter Blue subscribers.
These people don't seem like they would be super wealth or powerful.
> "Twitter blue subscribers are without fail the dumbest and most boring twitter users," Collins told me, moving on to the other, non-straight-up-hate accounts who subscribe. "I’ve gotten really good at being able to tell who pays for their blue check just by the quality of their replies to my tweets."
That doesn't seem like being upset about paying 8 dollars. More like they are upset their timeline has gotten shittier since you can pay 8 dollars for more reach.
This sounds completely backwards.
They have to pay because they have to meet their audience where they are. It's how many nouveau celebrities make money. Some use every platform, pumping out vapid content to fans. They aren't going anywhere.
If you offered them a flat "we'll force 10,000 people to see your tweets specifically for just $5" they still wouldn't take it because that's not what they care about or what they are trying to do.
They are users of twitter just as much as they are creators and having their timeline flooded with the kind of content the new bluecheck users create has clearly given them a far worse experience, because the kind of people that would generally pay for the benefits your ascribe are generally the kind of people that these users don't care to interact with at all.
Justin Bieber has over 100M followers, and tweets nothing but announcements. He's advertising. For free.
The idea that celebrities don't care about the audience they are reaching is utterly detached with reality.
They see themselves as the ones creating the value Twitter is able to sell. They’re probably right too.
And on this point, I agree with him.
So far they don’t
Given that blue checks aren’t going to pay the bills, what advertisers think matters
I’m also in the camp of “pay for the service” but so far Musk was not actually able to figure out the product.
In his implementation, Twitter doesn’t act like the telephone company which would not care who you are talking with and what you’re talking about as long as you’re paying the bills.
Instead it acts like a match making service where we are matched to people who are overly eager for attention and willing to pay.
The check was intended to verify the identity of a specific type of person, which many people know, and therefore is at high risk of impersonation. That's it. Making the check $8 voids this purpose, and to add on top of this, the most vile group of people bought into this subscription, who are Elon's sycophants and go after him like dogs doing whatever he wants and repeating what he says.
Of course no one looking after their image would want this blue check anymore.
If Louis Vuitton started selling their fancy-ass bags for, say, $20, all the rich and famous people would not be caught dead holding their bags...
If you ignore what people are actually saying and assign them a motivation that supports a cynical narrative, you could summarize the situation that way. I'm not sure it's an intellectually honest take, but you can say whatever you think.
> "I am actively rooting for the downfall of twitter," @dril tells me. "I hope to sabotage their efforts to become profitable, no matter how futile, in the hopes that they will eventually close up shop and release us all from this toilet."
> "absolutely block on sight," @dril tweeted(opens in a new tab) back in November, when Musk's Twitter Blue first launched.
Did he know it would be used for garbage content back then? Or, does the first quote sound like he has some other agenda? I mean, I'm on his side regarding the downfall, but if I read your other comment about this subject, it sounds like these Anti-Paid-Blue people are there because they want to fight for the survival of high quality content on Twitter, which is a bit obsessive, from my point of view.
But blocking blue checks on sight does look like a low-effort way to keep trolls from invading one's feed.
Many of these people built their own audience on Twitter over the years, long before Musk decided to buy it. So they feel that's an investment they made in the site, and their followers are something they created, and Elon's Twitter is currently being only an unfortunate mediator of it, holding them hostage.
So they feel stuck. They don't want to quit yet, hoping for a change (ALTHOUGH MANY HAVE QUIT), but they also don't want to encourage Musk and be seen to support his behavior and actions... which are frankly embarrassing.
elon threatens to put them on the next starship test? get real, they are not hostages, there are plenty of alternative platforms, you have only to select one, or more.
In fact, exactly because there are PLENTY of alternative platforms, Twitter still exists. If there were only 2-3 major Twitter competitors, people WOULD move. As is, they don't know where to move.
“Building an audience” on someone else’s platform is a recipe for continual butthurt.
This is exactly what was said when Twitter and Facebook and whatnot started. If your business is solely on someone’s platform, you’re at risk.
The proper, long term way to do it is to make a site, post content there and then post links onto social media while driving audience toward a mailing list or some other subscription that you control. It was only a matter of time that Twitter put the squeeze on and $8/month is just the beginning. I expect, over time social media will get to equilibrium of taking 30% of whatever the value of the audience is.
Any other brilliant ideas?
if this does not happen, i dont think you can say they have built an audience, they have merely done some things that makes the platform push the stuff to people, and the instant that stops, they dont exist to the "audience"
Then copy Discord and let people boost their profile and add other emoji like checkmarks. If a person boosts their profile enough they even get to add up to 3 icons from favicon [1]. /s?
[1] - https://www.favicon.cc/
2023: "Hey, Establishment, you are going to get the blue checkmarks, and you are going to like it!"
To me this suggests insecurity.
"Just build your own critical infrastructure"
How the tables have turned
No person is entitled to an account on a website. However, it is sometimes bad and sometimes good to ban people, depending on who they are and what they were doing.
I believe it's good to ban a Nazi and bad to ban a critic. I see no inconsistency here.
It's attractive to think there's some simple rule (like ban nobody) that lets you get out of deciding whether people are good or bad, but that's a trap.
This will show you who you’re following who paid for an account.
Many users have invested themselves (time, friendships, network, money, job) in the twitter brand. They want to defend their investment.
Many others haven't as much but might like to invest a bit of disposable money to gain a return.
Twitter the brand benefits regardless. look how much it's users care for it.