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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

#161

Post by bamboozled »

fzeroracer wrote: post #102
kortex wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is spoken by someone that's never had to work in a global environment. Like payment stuff and subscriptions is a nightmare when you have to deal with legal issues across the world. This is without going into needing to actually scope out the work, figure out how to integrate the changes safely, test them, roll them out and more. Plus it's disruptive to whatever work engineers were already doing to suddenly tell…

I thought the same thing, it was a naive comment indeed.

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

#162

Post by ryanbrunner »

ALittleLight wrote: post #11
cdolan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can’t this be automated with identification scanning software, which is highly commoditized at this point?

In my opinion it's dangerous to make verification too easy. Right now verification means, approximately, "this is somebody". Make verification too easy and it becomes "this person pays for Twitter" which is probably the opposite of what you want. I would say - keep verification as exclusive as it is, or slightly less, and charge for it is optimal.

"This is who they say they are" has been pretty reliably implemented in a ton of contexts, can largely be automated, and isn't really novel in any way.

Twitter's blue checkmark is more "this person is notable", which is a different thing and maybe valuable, although I think makes the blue checkmark probably a constant source of frustration for twitter.

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

#163

Post by ryanbrunner »

LightHugger wrote: post #109
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The blue checkmark is in practice just a symbol of vanity. That you're a genuine somebody, worthy of extra verification. Absolutely. But if anyone who pays $20/month can get a blue checkmark, it is no longer the status symbol you describe and its appeal totally disappears.

Good? Why are there people who think it should be a status symbol, to by recognized by twitter staff of all people as "noteworthy?" It's ridiculous and more than a little pathetic that people considered it a valid status symbol to begin with, and it should be dismantled as such. It's not called a "status symbol and we like this person mark" it's called "verified".

Good for everyone else, potentially.

Not really great for the strategy of charging for it, if they think that the blue checkmark is going to be a valuable part of charging for Twitter. The second it's available to the general public, it loses 99% of its value and doesn't really do anything to serve it's purpose of making Twitter Blue / paid twitter more attractive.

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

#164

Post by ryanbrunner »

Gigachad wrote: post #121
LightHugger wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good? Why are there people who think it should be a status symbol, to by recognized by twitter staff of all people as "noteworthy?" It's ridiculous and more than a little pathetic that people considered it a valid status symbol to begin with, and it should be dismantled as such. It's not called a "status symbol and we like this person mark" it's called "verified".

If anything it has become the opposite. “Blue checkmarks” is almost a slur these days.

I've definitely seen people devote their twitter stream for weeks at a time to advocating for getting a blue checkmark. Among certain crowds it is 100% a status symbol.

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

#165

Post by ryanbrunner »

miked85 wrote: post #101
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The blue checkmark is in practice just a symbol of vanity. That you're a genuine somebody, worthy of extra verification. Absolutely. But if anyone who pays $20/month can get a blue checkmark, it is no longer the status symbol you describe and its appeal totally disappears.

The verification process doesn't change, you just need to pay for it.

If anyone can get a blue checkmark, verification can become way simpler. It turns from "is this person actually notable, and is the user behind this account actually this notable person" to "does the name on the ID provided by this user match their account name". It goes from a subjective process requiring manual review to one that can be automated with off the shelf tools (if you wanted to get really basic, "does the name verified on this person's credit card match their account name")

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

#166

Post by seydor »

but then what is the point of calling it 'verified'. it is also a stupid idea: verified sources are often the ones who bring people to your platform, you dont want to charge them (and thus force them to give you their CC/ real life info), you want to charge others

Twitter seems to think they are the bee's knees. The mainstream press is already building the narrative that twitter is now rightwing because of Elon, and building a twitter competitor is not hard.

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

#167

Post by dementiapatent »

vadym909 wrote: post #14

Unrelated- but I think Elon is going the way of Trump and Kanye to being cancelled or his businesses being doomed. All the goodwill he had as the underdog at Tesla, he's throwing away with his "I'm better than you, I'm here to save you, Nothing I say will hurt me cos I'm invincible and people love me" complex.

Disagree, there are so many people who don't care about the media outrage machine that went from Trump to Musk and now to Kanye. It's all very political.

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

#168

Post by prirun »

I hate companies and executives with this idea that employees are required to work infinite hours on demand:

"Employees tasked with executing projects of Musk’s since he took control Thursday evening have been working late into the night and over the weekend."

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

#169

Post by soumyadeb »

Great idea. It's high time that social networks build an alternate "serious" revenue stream than the ad-focussed user-data-harvesting one. This might also lead to Twitter being more open like developer APIs with ecosystem of apps built on top (like mobile app stores). There would be less reasons to keep the gardens locked and walled when revenues are not tied to ad impressions and eyeballs
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