If you happen to had not already been made conscious of the information—and I love and respect everybody whose life selections means they aren’t—Twitter proprietor and exploding automobile connoisseur Elon Musk spent the weekend additional ruining his $44 billion buy by messing round with the stays of the platform’s “verification” system.
For a lot of Twitter’s existence, sure customers might be “verified” by confirming their identification with the positioning. This was an important device for celebrities, athletes, companies and the media, individuals who could or could not have been well-known, however who have been all prone to having their accounts impersonated within the identify of disinformation and scams.
And for nearly as lengthy, sure weirdos had a factor about this, seeing a system designed solely to show a consumer have been who they mentioned they have been—a necessity on a social media platform—as a symptom of, I dunno, some sort of leftist media woke conspiracy.
It is a massive cause Musk lastly acquired round to eradicating this outdated verification system final week, changing it with a “verified” system that required customers pay $8 to obtain a “verified” badge, despite the fact that completely nothing about their identification was being “verified” in any respect.
Anyway, issues acquired particularly absurd when over the weekend it emerged that nearly not one of the previously verified accounts have been going to pay the $8. Not even millionaire celebrities. In truth many even publicly mocked Musk and the choice. In return, Musk himself ordered that sure excessive profile customers be given a verified badge anyway, at Twitter’s expense, resulting in unimaginable scenes like Lebron James turning down the supply and online game offers man Wario64—who has over 1 million followers, making him one of many web site’s extra well-liked customers— having a “blue checkmark” forcibly hoisted on his account, then later eliminated once more.
Amidst all of the chaos, one notable (and wild) set of responses to occasions within the online game house got here from Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Video games. I’m pasting his whole Twitter thread in full right here, principally so you possibly can see the variety of occasions he’s so unsuitable he must be formally corrected:
(Observe: the #BlockTheBlue hashtag got here from individuals determining in a short time that the sort of one who would pay Musk $8 a month for Twitter can also be the sort of individual you’ll wish to block on sight)
This man complaining about highschool cliques and supposed “elites” is 52 years outdated and is price nearly $5 billion.
