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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#401

Post by empressplay »

slg wrote: post #103
danpalmer wrote: post #14

The good: Twitter should not be editorally curating people through verification, making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change, as long as it's not necessary for participation. Brands, celebrities, those in the public eye could benefit from this. Needs to be implemented with care and ideally with a branding change so as not to confuse users as the semantics change. The bad: $8 is…

>making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change Where does he say there will be any verification around ID? Twitter needs to make sure that I can't just name my account @WhiteHouseCommunications and pay $8 to get a blue checkmark. The whole point of the blue checkmark was to personally review those accounts to make sure they are who they say they are. Is Twitter still going to put…

They don't need to, your 'full' name is just locked to whatever's on your payment method. Problem solved.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#402

Post by whywhywhywhy »

atYevP wrote: post #287

They keep solving weird problems in weird ways. My $0.02 -> They should have: 1. Created a new “VIP status symbol” icon (diamond?) for people who care / need / want the prestige (charge for it or don't) - I'd almost fork the existing checks over to it for simplicity. 2. Kept blue check for actual identity verification (this is a real human). 3. Added features people care about (editing / etc…) to Blue and charge for…

Bluechecks are the ones actually addicted to twitter, it makes sense to put a paywall in front of them, not create a different layer.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#403

Post by soulofmischief »

dan-robertson wrote: post #373
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software I think this completely misunderstands why social media products like Twitter are successful. Those journalists (or gamers, or comedians, or porn stars) that you're arguing should be considering $9 a month as cost of business, they are the content creator…

If you’re a journalist (or your other suggestions) then you’re basically using Twitter as free advertising to (a) your followers and (b) people who read your tweets which have been retweeted. Having people coming towards the way you actually make money is probably worth a lot more than $8 per month to you, even considering that journalists aren’t so well paid (the idea of blue checks getting paywall bypass could be v…

Each and every one of these arguments seem to be forgetting the fact that $8/mo is a ton of money in some areas, prohibitively so, and this policy is exclusive of such journalists, users etc.

Blue checks should never be pay to play. They weren't designed that way. The problem is the ambiguity of the blue check leads to arbitrage that it seems all parties are interested in cashing in on. If Twitter is our modern Greek forum, it certainly seems like a classist and exclusive landscape. Elon's backtracking about price parity just illuminates the capitalist nature of the entire thing. Charge what we can, not what we should.

We should ask ourselves if we should be placing Twitter's financial needs over the social and intellectual needs of humanity as a whole.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#404

Post by seydor »

oceanplexian wrote: post #385
seydor wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing good. When everyone can buy a checkmark, it becomes nothing. The next step is "only allow replies from blue checkmarks" both are bad ideas, and solely because of musk's obsession with bots. Without a mob to prop up people with retweets, twitter will be useless. You cant have the good parts without the ugly parts

Everyone can’t buy a checkmark. Bots will be almost impossible to scale at $8/mo, which means if you deprioritize or hide content from bots without the check, Twitter has a realistic shot at eliminating the bot problem.

checkmarks mean prestige, exclusivity, and validation. public figures and journalists love prestige, they live for it. twitter just removed one thing that made it attractive to them. being able to buy it means it s useless for anything other than removing spam

that s a very odd way to remove spam . and personally i dont see twitter bots because i dont go searching for them. Musk is completely obsessed with the wrong problem

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#405

Post by freejazz »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #400
freejazz wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you presume good faith here?

Burning Twitter to the ground seems quite counterproductive, given the debt that was assumed for the sale. Misguided sure, but bad faith? I generally tend to assume that most people do things in good faith.

It's business, good faith isn't really the issue... this isn't your neighbor asking for some eggs....

>"Burning Twitter to the ground seems quite counterproductive"

Good faith or not, it doesn't mean someone can't be misguided. which is why I asked, who cares about their faith??

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#406

Post by chipotle_coyote »

slg wrote: post #103
danpalmer wrote: post #14

The good: Twitter should not be editorally curating people through verification, making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change, as long as it's not necessary for participation. Brands, celebrities, those in the public eye could benefit from this. Needs to be implemented with care and ideally with a branding change so as not to confuse users as the semantics change. The bad: $8 is…

>making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change Where does he say there will be any verification around ID? Twitter needs to make sure that I can't just name my account @WhiteHouseCommunications and pay $8 to get a blue checkmark. The whole point of the blue checkmark was to personally review those accounts to make sure they are who they say they are. Is Twitter still going to put…

Yeah, that strikes me as the real problem with this plan. Setting aside all the criticisms that can be made of how Twitter has handled verification (and "de-verification") in the past, the point of being verified was to signal "Twitter, the company, has a high degree of confidence that this account is who or what they claim to be," not to signal "Twitter, the company, is getting eight bucks a month from whoever this person is".

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#407

Post by NationOfJoe »

meheleventyone wrote: post #379
s_ting765 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you want to instead do the exact opposite – ask the consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money. I think it's only Onlyfans that can get away with such a business model.

Twitch, Patreon etc. etc. Arguably also Netflix, Roblox and free-to-play mobile games run on this sort of scheme as well.

also i guess YouTube is that as well, Consumers pay with attention to ad's, YouTube red, Channel members, super chat.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#408

Post by [deleted] »

memish wrote: post #202

A lot of people aren't groking what this means, even on tech and startup savvy HN. Naval and Balaji said it well: Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a utilitarian one. It elicits shrieks because it’s more about leveling the playing field than making money. https://twitter.com/naval/status/1587523978456748033 The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of equality. The billion…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#409

Post by enumjorge »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #174
minimaxir wrote: post #5

The price 100% was $20/mo as previously reported by journalists until Twitter dunked on it, and Elon's interpretation of the backlash is "the price is too high" and not "any price makes no sense at all." This pricing clarification is most likely due to Stephen King's complaint: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144 > We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How…

"Elon, what made you decide on $8?" "I was going to charge $20, but then Stephen King told me it was too much."

You joke, but after reading some texts from Musk and his social circle [1], I find it plausible that that is how some of these business decisions get made.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...

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