The ongoing X and Elon Musk Transgressions Thread

[Locke]

Originally Posted by GGG

Someone must have warned him about the risk in waiving all diligence on the transaction.

See...this is something that I cant wrap my head around.

You see...its not called 'diligence' just because its fun to say.

A consumer of any major asset should never, ever, EVER, waive or ignore due diligence.

I know Real Estate and Cars were insane for the past few years and you hear stories of people waiving it because they just want to buy this thing, but I'd never do it.

If one of my clients wanted to buy a business and waived their due diligence I'd think they're crazy or high.

I remember when we were buying a condo we investigated the condo board, the management company and did the diligence on the Reserve Fund and everything and the Realtor is telling us:

"This takes a while, someone else might come in and buy it while you're doing this."

Well then power to them, I'm not plunking down this kind of cash without knowing exactly what I'm getting.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by GGG

Someone must have warned him about the risk in waiving all diligence on the transaction.

I'm sure whoever did stopped getting invited along to the bro sessions for being a buzzkill.

[Swayze11]

Am I the only one that has zero issue with the paid checkmark?

At what point do we have to put a little onus on the consumer? Just because they have a checkmark should not mean they only provide facts.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

Am I the only one that has zero issue with the paid checkmark?

At what point do we have to put a little onus on the consumer? Just because they have a checkmark should not mean they only provide facts.

Its about pleasing your advertisers/important users that people use twitter to follow.

It doesn't impact me one way or the other. But if I ran a company, I wouldn't want someone to create a fake profile that looks identical to mine that is tweeting out offensive comments or lying about my company and if they do - I wouldn't want that fake profile to be able to pay $8 and make it indistinguishable from mine.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

Am I the only one that has zero issue with the paid checkmark?

At what point do we have to put a little onus on the consumer? Just because they have a checkmark should not mean they only provide facts.

The blue check was that little onus. Who do you rely on to determine whether the user is that user?

And if it doesn’t mean anything, why sell it?

[Swayze11]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Its about pleasing your advertisers/important users that people use twitter to follow.

It doesn't impact me one way or the other. But if I ran a company, I wouldn't want someone to create a fake profile that looks identical to mine that is tweeting out offensive comments or lying about my company and if they do - I wouldn't want that fake profile to be able to pay $8 and make it indistinguishable from mine.

but you can get that account banned... this isnt a new thing.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

Am I the only one that has zero issue with the paid checkmark?

At what point do we have to put a little onus on the consumer? Just because they have a checkmark should not mean they only provide facts.

There is value as a consumer to have a mark that means a certain level of authentication has occurred into who this person is. It’s not that what they say is true it’s that who they say they are is who they say they are and you can then perform diligence as required to assure the information is reasonably true.

There is value as a business / individual to be able to send out content to users that has been authenticated to be from you.

So I don’t have an issue with charging for a checkmark. It’s clearly a service that provides value to a user. The issue is that if anyone can get a checkmark then it devalues what a checkmark is especially when the check marks permit impersonation of other checkmarks.

Mostly it’s stupid for Musk to devalue the checkmark. Instead of opening it up he should have charged individuals and businesses who meat certain criteria to have one

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

but you can get that account banned... this isnt a new thing.

Sure - but that's a slow response. If I kept joining this website with fake Surefire accounts and posting fake trades - they could keep banning me but it would still annoy and trick people for the 10 minutes its up.

If they give Surefire some kind of verification on his user profile that I can't get - less people will get confused.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

Am I the only one that has zero issue with the paid checkmark?

At what point do we have to put a little onus on the consumer? Just because they have a checkmark should not mean they only provide facts.

Lucky for you, you were able to see how the pay-to-play checkmark experiment worked out. Hilariously, but also annoying if you wanted to see sports news and had to sift through the 1,000 verified LeBron accounts.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

Am I the only one that has zero issue with the paid checkmark?

At what point do we have to put a little onus on the consumer? Just because they have a checkmark should not mean they only provide facts.

I don't, but then I don't use Twitter. But the fix seems pretty obvious/evident.

Let the people who already have a blue check keep it, and charge them a monthly fee.

Since he wants to do the $8/month, fine. Call it "Twitter Green" or whatever, and make it a different color checkmark. Problem solved. Everyone gets their checks, and he gets his $$/month fee.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

I don't, but then I don't use Twitter. But the fix seems pretty obvious/evident.

Let the people who already have a blue check keep it, and charge them a monthly fee.

Since he wants to do the $8/month, fine. Call it "Twitter Green" or whatever, and make it a different color checkmark. Problem solved. Everyone gets their checks, and he gets his $$/month fee.

He's back himself into a corner on this because he made it out to be some kind of social concern issue that the bluechecks were seen as more important than everyone else. So now if you try to differentiate between the checks - the people who cared about that first message will be annoyed.

[Wormius]

It makes no sense why the average joe would even want a checkmark. Like you’re almost famous enough but they won’t verify you?

I think there could be value if you supply proof of id and maybe receive a white check mark or something to prove you’re a human and then allow you to mute all non-checkmarked users.

[KTrain]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

I don't, but then I don't use Twitter. But the fix seems pretty obvious/evident.

Let the people who already have a blue check keep it, and charge them a monthly fee.

Since he wants to do the $8/month, fine. Call it "Twitter Green" or whatever, and make it a different color checkmark. Problem solved. Everyone gets their checks, and he gets his $$/month fee.

They people who are purchasing the blue check want it because it makes them look important and "certified". If they made them different colours it would devalue it for people who want that fake certification. That's why you have to click into someone's account to see if they're actually an official check or a paid check.

Personally I wouldn't pay for one but I see why some of the hardcore users would want it. That said, Musk has also pointed out that people with checks will be given preferential treat in the algorithm so their tweets well show higher than other users. That will be annoying for the average user.

[PsYcNeT]

On the plus side, these new browser addons that replace Paid Checks with a Nerd Emote are amazing and let you know immediately who's opinions you can ignore.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

On the plus side, these new browser addons that replace Paid Checks with a Nerd Emote are amazing and let you know immediately who's opinions you can ignore.

I'm waiting for the reverse where we just post blue checks to respond to nerd ####.

[Wastedyouth]

Am I dumb, or would it not be palatable to just charge a 2$ user fee per month across the board and leave the blue check as an actual verification?

You might lose a few people, but lets be honest, who out here isn't paying 2$ to be on a platform most people spend hours a day on.

This would also help with troll farms, it becomes far more difficult and less likely a troll farm is going to be able to keep making bots when it actually costs money to do it.

Kill two birds with one stone?

[photon]

Or just charge a fee to remove ads.. Or still charge for verification and blue checkmark as just that and have a different fee for add remove/premium features.

There were tons of more logical ways to do it than what was done.

The biggest thing I didn't like about his vision of the blue check was that he said the algorithms would prefer paying people, so you'd have to scroll way down to see non-payers' opinions.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Wastedyouth

Am I dumb, or would it not be palatable to just charge a 2$ user fee per month across the board and leave the blue check as an actual verification?

You might lose a few people, but lets be honest, who out here isn't paying 2$ to be on a platform most people spend hours a day on.

This would also help with troll farms, it becomes far more difficult and less likely a troll farm is going to be able to keep making bots when it actually costs money to do it.

Kill two birds with one stone?

Honestly? Most people. If they're going to charge $2 they might as well charge $5. I bet the numbers who'd stay at both price points would basically be the same.

[Wastedyouth]

Originally Posted by nik-

Honestly? Most people. If they're going to charge $2 they might as well charge $5. I bet the numbers who'd stay at both price points would basically be the same.

Sure.

My guess is they would loose maaaaaybe 20% of their current freeloading userbase, including trolls and users who barely come back.

The majority of people on there use twitter for like 2-3 hours a day. They might balk initially, but they would be back.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by Wastedyouth

You might lose a few people, but lets be honest, who out here isn't paying 2$ to be on a platform most people spend hours a day on.

Honestly, I think that a $5/month fee for everyone to use Twitter is the way to go here. The sheer number of people willing to blow $8 to tweet a handful of times and then get their account banned was kinda surprising. Clearly, there's easy money to be had.