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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#901

Post by rcarr »

oblio wrote: post #833
rcarr wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that if we want to avoid the mess we're in now, we've got to start paying for things. Once you've hit 1 billion users, at that point you've pretty much become an institution. You've never marketed it as being free forever so everyone knows the score so they're more prepared. Sure some people will leave but I think the majority would stay unless ther…

> I don't know, I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that if we want to avoid the mess we're in now, we've got to start paying for things. Maybe in your tech savvy circles.

I've spent the majority of my working life so far on the minimum wage and I only relatively recently escaped. I would have been open to paying for a service back then if it was only one hour's wage a year. If it's one hour's wage every month like Musk is proposing then no: I wouldn't have been.

In my experience, poor people are not adverse to paying things, they are just being priced out by poor salaries and greedy shareholders. These services don't need to grow and change. Every company does not have to be a trillion dollar rocket ship of growth. Hacker News has been the same for years. Just offer me a basic, functioning service and a small fee for the upkeep. Anything else only serves shareholders rather than actual users.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#902

Post by blibble »

berkes wrote: post #866
costcofries wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation" I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage more now. If you aren't that user…

Please do realize that $8 is something completely different for a Norwegian than a Bangladeshi. For one it's the cost of a beer, for the other, the wages of days work.

to be fair to musk he did say the $8 would be adjusted for local income

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#903

Post by _djo_ »

tptacek wrote: post #603
bee_rider wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is true of most. If your identity is worth verifying by Twitter, it is apparently worth something to Twitter. If you wanted to prove that your twitter account was you, you wouldn't need their permission, right? Surely you could sign a file on your Twitter account with your PGP key or whatever.

This has always been the bullshit story Twitter tells itself about the blue check. In reality, the value of the check has practically nothing to do with verifying identities, and everything to do with conferring status on people "notable" enough to qualify. The energy source for that status is, in fact, people like King, Swift, LeBron, Obama (and Trump), J. Lo and Jimmy Fallon; Twitter trades off the idea that the ch…

To be fair, it was specifically introduced because of how impersonation of well known people was becoming a problem. Twitter was sued by Tony La Russa because of an impersonation and had a bunch of celebrities complaining about it. [0]

That it has also taken on a status aspect does not take away from its original intent and ongoing usefulness as a verification mechanism. That's especially true for celebrities, politicians, organisations, and journalists.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/facing-lawsuits-and-compla...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#904

Post by rasz »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #797
alphabetting wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point still stands. 6 of the top 10 on Youtube got their large followings being making content for Youtube. 0% of the top 50 on Twitter are primarily known for their tweets.

> 0% of the top 50 on Twitter are primarily known for their tweets. Why limit yourself to the top 50? 0% of all Twitter users are primarily known for their tweets. Tweets are, by design, unsuitable for publishing content. They're useful for advertising content you publish somewhere else.

foone is

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#905

Post by _djo_ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #358
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…

I think you're wrong. The network is stronger than that. Yes, those highly-connected nodes could easily kill the network... if they all coordinated to leave at once. Which is a real risk here, because of how high-profile and controversial the issue is right now. But normally, they're just as glued to the network as everyone else. Perhaps even more so, because... ... they aren't creating content for fun. They're creat…

Nope. That may be true for a thin slice of Twitter's most active and popular users, but not at all for the long tail of people posting in niche interest areas that keep people engaged. The scientists, engineers, artists, philosophers, OSINT researchers, etc who post interesting content and keep people returning to Twitter to engage with it.

Some of those get some reward from it in terms of added publicity, others in terms of building out their network, but a bunch even do it anonymously and seem to get no real world financial benefit from it other than sharing what they're working on and having discussions with other people interested in the same things.

Musk seems to fundamentally misunderstand not only how and why regular people use Twitter, but also how popular but non-celebrity people use it. He only sees it through his own lens, which is as a marketing tool, a way to move markets, and a place to shitpost freely. His changes make sense in that context only.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#906

Post by _djo_ »

soulofmischief wrote: post #403
dan-robertson wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed. This discussion has been far too American-centric and not considered the impact this would have on Twitter users elsewhere in the world. Especially journalists in developing countries and war zones, who have been able to use Twitter to amplify stories that would otherwise have been missed or ignored.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#907

Post by _djo_ »

costcofries wrote: post #47
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…

"biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation" I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage more now. If you aren't that user…

That'll immediately remove a lot of useful contributors, including journalists in developing countries, people working on interesting things in niche areas, and so many others.

Every network analysis of Twitter shows that the majority of people are not all engaging just with the blue checks or the most popular accounts. There's a huge long tail that keeps most users on the platform.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#908

Post by _djo_ »

dheera wrote: post #582
jdlshore wrote: post #569

I'm likely to pay for it at that price. For reference, I have a bit more than 14K followers on Twitter. Why? Two reasons. 1) Funding social media through advertising has led to dysfunctional outcomes like outrage being more visible than high-quality content. I’m in favor of alternative revenue streams, although they have to provide value, and removing ads doesn't count as providing value. 2) My Twitter account is par…

What does a blue check get you anyway that you can't just have with a blue check emoji?

Currently? Protection against impersonation is the key benefit for most who have it.

By most accounts the additional tools they provide in terms of filtering aren't that valuable.

In Musk's proposal basically a slightly better Twitter Blue.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#909

Post by _djo_ »

simondotau wrote: post #675
BurningFrog wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand Elon either, but I'm certain that he's not an impulsive moron who doesn't understand complex system, or that he's financing all this with his dad's emerald mine money. For me, there is enough track record to prove he has some very unique business skills, and often succeeds by doing things that conventionally looks crazy. That said, Elon's Twitter may well be a failure regardless. Pretty sure it won…

The emerald mine claim comes from statements made by Errol Musk (Elon's father) who described it as a part share in an Zambian mine which resulted in a total lifetime revenues in the order of a few hundred thousand dollars. None of what Errol has said has been corroborated by anyone. No independent sources exist. It's also worth noting that Zambia is not a conflict gem country and an emerald mine in Zambia would not…

Agreed. Though it does seem that Elon's family were quite well socially connected and that at least some of his early success in raising funds comes from that.

For instance, his connection to Roelof Botha, who in turn leveraged the connections made by his father when he was spending a lot of time in the US as South Africa's last apartheid-era foreign minister.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#910

Post by _djo_ »

memish wrote: post #71
mikkergp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such... odd behavior. For sure Stephen King who has a net worth of $500 million dollars does not mean "the price is too high". If Elon is successful, even I will read the business school case study on it, because it flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems and... well just about everything. The only way this works is if Elon's internal processes are way different from his public persona…

For King and many other blue checks it's a status symbol. A way for the Lord to distinguish himself from the peasants. King (aptly named) would be happier if it was a Veblen good that cost $100,000/mo, which he could afford, but the peasants can't. Elon is mocking King and his status symbol by saying "fine, how about $8?", which from the King's perspective, is worse than $20 because even more peasants will have it. T…

It's remarkable how quickly so many of those defending Musk are emphasising the 'lords' and 'peasants' language after he used that terminology in a tweet.

It's not original, it's not adding to the discussion, and it just sounds like sycophancy.

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