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Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

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Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#51

Post by hedora »

superchroma wrote: post #2

"Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired." Well I hope the meme that elon is some kind of benevolent and inspiring leader is truly dead and buried.

I'm one of the more anti union posters on HN.

If I worked at Twitter, I'd be trying to organize a union.

First demand: No one gets fired when Musk takes one too many bong hits.

Second demand: 99% of profits go to employee bonuses moving forward + 3x salary cap for execs.

Third demand: Employees get to vote on the new "diverse viewpoints" censorship board membership.

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#52

Post by minimaxir »

MBCook wrote: post #38
jeanlucneptune wrote: post #24

I'm a twitter "heavy user" - logging in daily and tweeting > 4x per week. Users like me make up 10% of users, but 90% of tweets. I've been a heavy user X 15 years and I'm still not a blue check. I perceive no benefit in being verified and I doubt being verified would have/will change my experience as a user. If they verified me for FREE I wouldn't care. $20/month to be verified on a site controlled by a maniac in the…

Verification isn’t/wasn’t (supposed to be) about how often you used the platform. It was so journalists and celebrities and such could be identified and you could tell if you were intersecting with the genuine article or a fake account impersonating them. 90 days to sign up before people lose their check mark. So 90 days until the clones come out. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the MASSIVE amount of debt Twitte…

> I’m sure this has nothing to do with the MASSIVE amount of debt Twitter is now in and desperately needing money.

The irony is that even if every current Verified user paid in, it'd still not do much for Twitter's debt.

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#53

Post by holler »

ClayM wrote: post #30
jeanlucneptune wrote: post #24

I'm a twitter "heavy user" - logging in daily and tweeting > 4x per week. Users like me make up 10% of users, but 90% of tweets. I've been a heavy user X 15 years and I'm still not a blue check. I perceive no benefit in being verified and I doubt being verified would have/will change my experience as a user. If they verified me for FREE I wouldn't care. $20/month to be verified on a site controlled by a maniac in the…

same -i'm an extremely heavy user, now i'm investigating what alternatives are out there

Just replied to your latest tweet with alternative I'm building (https://sqwok.im). It's a slight twist where each post includes a live public chatroom instead of the reply model Twitter uses. Slightly different experience geared for fluid conversation.

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#54

Post by muglug »

Even with the hiring freezes across Silicon Valley, good engineers will right now be trying to leave Twitter in droves.

The stress of all this will have an additive effect, and make a salary cut more bearable if they have to change jobs.

Instagram has about 20,000 employees. Twitter has about 7,500. How many of those can it lose before advertisers start leaving in droves? At that point, whatever monetisation strategy Musk comes up with will be too little too late.

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#55

Post by kortex »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #21

Might as well have just fired them. There’s no way a feature like that can get released in most companies on that timeline, even without the scale issues.

What? Even in a bloated, red-tape bureaucratic hellhole, that's maybe a few engineer-weeks at absolute most. Wire up a payment processor, plug into whatever api sets the blue checkmark, have some expiration logic, done.

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#57

Post by ascagnel_ »

MBCook wrote: post #38
jeanlucneptune wrote: post #24

I'm a twitter "heavy user" - logging in daily and tweeting > 4x per week. Users like me make up 10% of users, but 90% of tweets. I've been a heavy user X 15 years and I'm still not a blue check. I perceive no benefit in being verified and I doubt being verified would have/will change my experience as a user. If they verified me for FREE I wouldn't care. $20/month to be verified on a site controlled by a maniac in the…

Verification isn’t/wasn’t (supposed to be) about how often you used the platform. It was so journalists and celebrities and such could be identified and you could tell if you were intersecting with the genuine article or a fake account impersonating them. 90 days to sign up before people lose their check mark. So 90 days until the clones come out. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the MASSIVE amount of debt Twitte…

> Who comes up with a feature and gives the programmers a very short deadline with a threat to fire them if they can’t make it? That’s horribly cruel.

This has to be a pretext to turn a layoff into a firing with cause, right? 7 days is absolutely ridiculous for something like this, even though they already have some (most?) of the plumbing laid via Twitter Blue.

Also, tomorrow is a non-governmental holiday in the US -- Halloween. I'd imagine quite a few employees with kids are taking time off, so this is also begging for a discrimination lawsuit -- CA law bars discrimination based on an employee's role as a caregiver of a child.

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#58

Post by ALittleLight »

The part about the deadline really enrages me. I think about all the people in society who have intense and demanding jobs and demanding quotas and schedules and compare that to the soft and lazy lives of FAANG developers. Why is it okay that an Amazon driver pees in a bottle to hit delivery quotas, but a Twitter developer making ten times as much can't be asked to launch a feature in a week? I don't know if this is good business, but I think anyone who complains about it should be fired.

I would also find this extremely invigorating from the software developer side. I've worked on products at Microsoft and Amazon that have literally gone years between releases and seen so many features endlessly delayed by needless discussion and planning. I would love to get the assignment "ship this in a week or you're fired." It's not like we're splitting the atom here, Twitter Blue, a paid for thing, already exists and the verification badge already exists. If you are a Twitter developer who can't hammer this square peg into that round hole in a week...

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#59

Post by jeanlucneptune »

conanbatt wrote: post #40
jeanlucneptune wrote: post #24

I'm a twitter "heavy user" - logging in daily and tweeting > 4x per week. Users like me make up 10% of users, but 90% of tweets. I've been a heavy user X 15 years and I'm still not a blue check. I perceive no benefit in being verified and I doubt being verified would have/will change my experience as a user. If they verified me for FREE I wouldn't care. $20/month to be verified on a site controlled by a maniac in the…

It would still be free for you. What's the conflict?

My belief is that under Musk being verified will have a significant impact on your experience as a user. In other words, I think we're heading to a regime where you get verified or you're forced off. No Twitter for free users.

Re: Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

#60

Post by ITB »

I read this article and imagine myself being invigorated if I was working inside Twitter, a company finally emerging from a death spiral. Anecdotally, I’ve seen an increasing number of software developers that don’t care to innovate, learn, or have an impact— many people are completely focused on living a comfortable life and having their employer bend over backwards to support a hedonistic lifestyle. I personally don’t think this leads to happiness, but instead to wanting to run faster and faster on a treadmill with infinite speeds. Working hard, making things happen, struggling, are all very worthy ways of spending one’s time.
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