Discussion

• @zoeschiffer Zoë Schiffer on x

  NEW: Twitter has suspended the launch of Twitter Blue and is actively trying to stop people from subscribing “to help address impersonation issues,” per an internal note. 1/

• @rafaelshimunov @rafaelshimunov on x

  Did Twitter Blue tweet just cost Eli Lilly $LLY billions? Yes. https://twitter.com/...

• @hotcyder @hotcyder on x

  The plan? Allow users to register verified parody accounts for $8, and then ban them for breaking TOS a day later, keeping the $8 https://twitter.com/...

• @pcalcado @pcalcado on x

  I'm thinking about the many, many amazing talks and case studies Twitter engineering published over the last decade about how insane was it to keep the site up during World Cups. Well, guess what starts in about a week?

• @rj_gallagher Ryan Gallagher on x

  Also: We're told Musk laid off an entire information security team at Twitter that oversaw sharing of user data with advertisers & research partners, a move that triggered internal concerns about vulnerability to security threats & potential violations of FTC rules.

• @rossrubin Ross Rubin on x

  The Twitter Bluehaha may be one of the silliest self-inflicted crises I've ever seen. Just make the paid badge different and keep both or design a new one and retire the old. The only reason to replace the verified badge with a paid one is to sow confusion and sell authority.

• @ijustine @ijustine on x

  Omg it worked. And I only had to pay $150k for this new badge!!!!!! https://twitter.com/...

• @iiiitsandrea @iiiitsandrea on x

  bought $8/blue checks about to become a brand's WORST nightmare 👀 this isn't Coca Cola, but this screenshot alone tells you otherwise https://twitter.com/...

• @themaxburns Max Burns on x

  Earlier today I saw fake-but-verified airline customer support accounts asking Twitter users who were reaching out to *legit* airlines to DM them for help. This is asking for trouble once the scammers start stealing ticket/financial info.

• @kt_so_it_goes @kt_so_it_goes on x

  “we'll simply get 3 billion people to sign up” https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @nickbilton Nick Bilton on x

  A short thread about Blue Check Marks. In the early days of Twitter, waaaaaaaay before the celebs and the crypto bros and the pundithinkfluencers were on here, part of the fun of the platform was the fake accounts.

• @nickbilton Nick Bilton on x

  There was @DarthVader and @God and countless others — and they were amazing. It didn't take long before the fun accounts became parody fake accounts of real people.

• @oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x

  A lot of people on this site who spent the last three years making a bunch of money calling content moderation a censorious communist plot got impersonated once this week and are now desperate for some of that content moderation.

• @faizsays Faiz Siddiqui on x

  Some of Twitter's own staff couldn't tell parody accounts from real ones, three people said, because Twitter's internal tools didn't yet distingush between legacy and Twitter Blue verified accounts. Accounts simply showed up as “verified” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...

• @nickbilton Nick Bilton on x

  (Fun aside: the fake accounts actually ended up luring the *real* celebs to Twitter. Someone started a fake Shaq account, and when real Shaq heard about it, he signed up as @the_real_shaq. This also led to lots of famous people putting “Real” in their username — ahem, Donald.)

• @film_girl @film_girl on x

  This is the most 2007 take I've ever seen on this website. A website I have been on since 2007. https://twitter.com/...

• @badastronomer @badastronomer on x

  If I owned a big corporation (and I were evil) then I would think spending $8 for a burner account to make my competitor lose millions/billions might be a good investment. I can't imagine the Feds aren't rallying their troops to investigate Elon and Twitter now. https://twitter.c…

• @dcseifert Dan Seifert on x

  “A verified account purporting to be Rudy W. Giuliani also had a message for its followers: “I'd like to announce I shidded."" https://nymag.com/...

• @nickbilton Nick Bilton on x

  (Last note: One possible solution to the Blue Check Marks For All is to make a system where people are verified as being who they say they are, and when they get a blue badge they can no longer change their account name... but that would cost a lot more than $8 to implement.)

• @nickbilton Nick Bilton on x

  In 2009 it became kind of an epidemic, if you will, on Twitter. There was a fake Kanye (Ye was not happy about it!) and then there was a fake Tony La Russa (the St. Louis Cardinals manager) and he was so pissed he decided to sue Twitter...

• @emilybell Emily Bell on x

  A high school sophomore from 2007 called and wants their B grade essay back https://twitter.com/...

• @nickbilton Nick Bilton on x

  Anyway, where Twitter screwed up, was that over time being verified became a form of online feudalism, where there were the Check Mark People, and those rest of surfs who couldn't get verified.

• @alexstamos Alex Stamos on x

  I think it would be hard to tank the economy, but if the Lazarus Group has a backstopped option account somewhere Twitter-powered stock manipulation might be an entertaining way to make their quarterly contribution to the ICBM fund instead of just crypto scams and ransomware. htt…

• @courtneymilan @courtneymilan on x

  Imagine sleeping in your office to deliver a feature that destroys the platform and then less than a week later gets rolled back. https://twitter.com/...

• @tomcoates Tom Coates on x

  What happens next is they start putting in blacklists of unacceptable names for people to call their accounts. Then someone explains to them that a capital “i” looks exactly like an l. Then they start saying that parody isn't okay either.

• @tomcoates Tom Coates on x

  This was called “verification” and it was on lots of people's accounts. All users understood “verification” and the blue tick that came with it. The best way to solve this problem is to stop letting people buy fake verification blue ticks. https://twitter.com/...

• @michaeldweiss Michael Weiss on x

  Comedy is indeed back on this site. https://twitter.com/...

• @reckless Nilay Patel on x

  He's about 90 minutes away from posting the man in the arena, I can just feel it

• @fmanjoo Farhad Manjoo on x

  This constant cry of “elites!!!!!” from the world's richest man suggests such deep insecurity. Dude, there's literally nobody more elite than you, you can crash any party you like by simply buying the venue. It's the worst when elites think they're Everyman https://twitter.com/..…

• @parkermolloy Parker Molloy on x

  Think about how easy it would be for people to short stocks this way. https://twitter.com/...

• @zoeschiffer Zoë Schiffer on x

  “Note 2: Existing Blue subscribers will still have access to their Blue features.” 3/

• @mikeisaac Rat King on x

  for eight bucks and a few logo png files you can shave millions in market cap off an entire sector's stock price https://t.co/WGJypdPVAY

• @mikesington Mike Sington on x

  The chaos continues. Twitter pulls the plug on Twitter Blue, subscriptions and paid-for verification blue checkmark no longer available.

• @sherman4949 Alex Sherman on x

  I say this sincerely: @elonmusk would do well spending 3 months at a major media organization to better understand the motivations of mainstream media. Unpaid internship, maybe? https://twitter.com/...

• @spacexofficiall @spacexofficiall on x

  Just found out NASA got further in to space than we ever have in like, the 70s?! What the fuck are we doing over here

• @ajbauer A.J. Bauer on x

  That Eli Lilly prank changed the Twitter game: New goal isn't getting more and more people to laugh at terrible puns, it's getting Elon Musk sued by bigger and bigger multinational corporations until he files for bankruptcy.

• @cloud_opinion @cloud_opinion on x

  you are too humble Elon. Twitter blue has given us Jesus Christ, George Washington and free insulin for life from Eli Lily. Its going amazing. https://twitter.com/...