Elon Musk‘s new vision for Twitter seems to be going swimmingly — if the plan was to immediately roll back his long-awaited double verification scheme and have the few employees he has left spend the past 24 hours battling an increasing tide of misinformation, that is. Twitter Blue is officially live, and with it comes the Musk-given power to be anyone you want to be for a mere $8 a month. But as Twitter’s new owner continues to espouse the app’s democratization of status, a new wave is coming that even the tech CEO might find difficult to battle: good old-fashioned shame.
Twitter’s short-lived double verification, which placed an official tag underneath verified accounts, was an effort to prevent disinformation and flag “real accounts” to users. But after quickly rolling that feature back, the only way to tell the legitimacy of an account is by clicking on its verified badge. If you were verified before Twitter Blue was released or because you’re a public figure, a flag will appear with the words “This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.” If you’ve paid for your verified badge, the flag reads, “this account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.”
Since October, when Musk first began floating an entirely subscription-based model for the bird app, users delighted in the “this mf paid for twitter” meme, which poked fun at the concept of people purchasing an app that remained free and ridiculous for years. Now, the meme has been built directly into the app, resurfacing its potential and leaving Twitter Blue subscribers open to the greatest retort of all time in their comments. While the photosets completely vary, they all feature a pointing figure laughing at the tweeter for their paid checkmark. The general idea: why should we listen to someone who spent $8 on something so useless?
Even with the blue check’s confusing and meaningless nature, some of Musk’s supporters are still unhappy that it specifies between people who have paid for their checkmarks and people who went through the old verification process. In between tweeting memes, Musk joked, “We are changing the text to say “Legacy Verified. Could be notable, but could also be bogus.”
“In days to come, we’ll add granularity to verified badge, such as organizational affiliation & ID verification,” he added. “Rollout of new verified Blue is intentionally limited just to iOS in a few countries with very little promotion. As we iron out issues, we will expand worldwide on all platforms.”
It’s abundantly clear Twitter Blue’s haphazard rollout will bring up more problems than it fixes in the long run. On Thursday, Twitter Blue subscribers began to note that people who were verified before their subscription were no longer legacy verified. Musk’s response: Who cares?
“Subscription Blue is better than legacy Blue,” he tweeted Wednesday. “I switched over.”
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