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

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.

Yeah your view is the nonsensical no mans land Musk is aiming for.

Firstly, the old way didn't give more reach to your tweets based on who you were, people still had to choose to follow your account. Even in replies to people's tweets, blue tick accounts had the same access as everyone else, the only difference may occur when their tweets get liked or retweeted more, which may make their tweets appear first under replies. But again, that's nothing to do with the blue tick, but rather followers engaging with the tweets of someone famous. That would happen blue tick or no. Someone paying for Twitter Blue and for their tweets to be bumped up the queue still doesn't mean they're going to get any active engagement on their tweets.

Again, the blue tick was only a verification symbol. That's it, that's all it did. It didn't give your tweets more reach, their followers did that by liking/retweeting their tweets. Like I said, it's not gatekeeping, it's recognition.

As for "now the decision is yours", tell that to all the accounts who now have blue ticks against their will, whether Musk was doing it as a punishment, or just because they have 1m+ followers. Again, literal gatekeeping.

By asking who is better performing YouTube or Netflix you have completely missed the point and you don't understand the business of video streaming and social media in general. YouTube could not operate with Netflixs business model and vice versa.

YouTube is quantity over quality and Netflix are the opposite. They operate in different segments of the video streaming industry but both are highly successful in their respective niches.

For YouTube to generate the quantity required to compete with Netflix it needs a large number of users most of whom will produce stuff that very few people watch. YouTube does pays well enough so it's possible to make a career out of YouTube for even moderately successful creators.

Netflix rely on the vast majority of its content being watched. So it pays for content to be produced directly or buys content already produced. They could never produce YouTubes level of content nor would subscribers tolerate the reduction in quality this volume increase would cause.

Twitter is not Netflix it relies on its users to create content especially users that have big followings. As others have explained asking these people to pay is stupid putting things mildly. The guy has no understanding of social media.

What seems to have happened is that Musks solution to Twitters cash problem has been to look at the total users and say that if X% pay X price, Twitter would be profitable. If it was really that simple the previous owners of Twitter would have done that years ago. Again it shows the guy is clueless about the Twitter and the industry its in.