31–40 of 56 posts
This is perfectly legal, and OK with me, but many will perceive it as "democracy for those who can pay."
There's no need to muddy the waters with "many will perceive it[...]" when the reality is that in order to participate in the vote you have to pay money.
So, at first, Elon Musk declared that the "current lords & peasants system" is bad. Now, he's implementing a system where it's Lord Elon, his $8 Vassals, and the rest of the unwashed Peasants cannot speak. He seems rather unclear on concepts of equality and free speech . . .
He had a good idea before the acquisition which was “authenticate all real humans”. Seems like that’d solve many issues on the platform, but imagine it’d be expensive to implement.
The Bumble dating app has you verify accounts by taking a photo of yourself making a pose.
Your account gets verified almost instantly. I'm not sure how it works, presumably some algorithm compares the verification photo to your profile photos. Plus there are probably other data that go into verification beyond the photo.
I'm curious how well it would stand up to AI generated profile pictures and a deepfaked verification photo.
Another verification process I've seen:
When you apply for a loan online, you are challenged to answer questions such as: select from this list of addresses the ones that you lived at, and select from this list of cars that you once used as collateral for a loan.
My point being, it's not impossible, but you're right that it won't be cheap. And not everyone on Twitter will be able to take part in automated verification for one reason or another.
Plus Twitter depends on free accounts to have enough people at the party. Or at least in the growth days that was important. Maybe it's not a priority anymore.
Perhaps the result wasn't the one he hoped for?
I think he is just trying to find ways to drive people to make these purchases.
Makes sense if you vote Twitter as a private business (which it is). Prioritize the needs of paying customers who have skin in the game. Like any business would. On the other hand, it makes less sense if you view Twitter as a public utility (which it is not).
In theory, (most) botnet operators can’t afford $8/month/bot; so this seems like a reasonable strategy from that point of view
In theory, yes, but it's known that these gangs who do platform manipulation somehow acquire SIM cards in bulk to register accounts en masse . And that costs money.
Perhaps the result wasn't the one he hoped for?
I'm not sure about that. He also had the "be careful what you wish for" tweet, which indicates he had something in mind if the vote was to step down. Also, I can't imagine he planned to put so much energy into this one part of his empire forever.
When he speaks, he closes doors and creates surface area for his critics to latch onto. They can rightly call him a hypocrite because he so often publishes things that he really should probably let stew for a while in his head first, whether or not he actually acts on it.
This is perfectly legal, and OK with me, but many will perceive it as "democracy for those who can pay."
I don't know if I'd call it that, but it's certainly not "the world's town square".
Makes sense if you vote Twitter as a private business (which it is). Prioritize the needs of paying customers who have skin in the game. Like any business would. On the other hand, it makes less sense if you view Twitter as a public utility (which it is not).