this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.

...

Threatening to remove verified checkmarks is a risky move given how many ‘Twitter alternative’ services like Threads and Bluesky are cropping up and how willing consumers appear to be to jump ship, with Threads rocketing to 100 million registrations in just five days. That said, it’s not like other efforts to drum up some additional cash, like increasing API pricing, have gone down especially well, either. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for him.

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[–] andrr_464@lemmy.world 218 points 1 year ago (14 children)
[–] enu@lemm.ee 165 points 1 year ago (3 children)

At this point, I'd say: Providing entertainment to the internet while also helping grow the fediverse

[–] theTrainMan932@infosec.pub 51 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Having never been on twitter myself I'm especially entertained, watching and laughing from a far corner of the internet

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Twitter has a bad reputation from the "buzzworthy" people. It was nowhere near as bad as the terminally online would have you believe. I'd even say it was a GREAT site before 2016.

It's a social media platform. You (used to) choose whose tweets you saw. As such, it was easy to curate your account to stick to one kind of content. I never saw politics or sports, I only followed funny people. And I had every major brand straight up blocked

The 140 character days were like text Vine where you made a joke through constraints and I loved it

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Notably, Vine was created by Twitter.

And then Vine was axed by Twitter. (One of the dumbest mistakes Twitter ever made - look how successful TikTok is, and think that Twitter literally had that a decade ago and decided to shut it down.)

So really, Vine was just video Twitter, instead of Twitter being text Vine.

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[–] jsveiga@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Since he started his act about buying Twitter I saw that as a personal vendetta to harm it - the ultimate tantrum for being mocked at there and not being under his control. He said he'd buy then backed off just to hurt Twitter's value, but then when he was forced to buy it for the first offer value, he got even more butthurt.

It's pretty clear that everything he's done since is to get revenge and destroy it. It's insane that some people keep praising his decisions towards Twitter as anything but ridiculous.

He's the rich brat who doesn't get brown nosed by the waiter in front of his date, then proceed to buy the restaurant just to fire the guy.

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Saudi Arabia put up 20 billion or so of the 44 he used to purchase twitter. The reason behind this is widely speculated to be Saudi Arabia wanting to destroy twitter because it was instrumental in the Arab Spring uprising.

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 26 points 1 year ago

He is ensuring his place in history as a seminal business case study.

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can think of two explanations.

  1. He wants to intentionally run Twitter into the ground and destroy it. Probably because people were mean to him on it or something

  2. He’s completely lost his mind and is just being stupid.

Hanlons Razor makes me think it’s 2

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[–] UnsyllabledQuickies@lemmy.world 105 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Just a few more failed businesses and in about 50 years he'll be all set to run for POTUS as the Republican nominee.

[–] Bdtrngl@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago (6 children)

What a shame he was born in South Africa and isn't eligible.

[–] whiskeypickle@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

for some reason, i don't think that would stop him from trying anyway and then throwing a tantrum for being ineligible.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm not convinced the GOP wouldn't nominate him, and that the current SCOTUS wouldn't rule he was eligible to run.

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[–] DrQuint@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I'm sure the Republicans would just come out of the woodwork and ask "Oh, but what about Obama, how come he can run for POTUS then?". Which is, of course, something I already seen someone ask. Wasn't even some old person from "different times" or whatever, this person genuinely just had no justifiable reason to be this racist.

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[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (10 children)

I'm not American but I confess I'm relieved that he can't do that. Just try to imagine someone like him being able to fire nukes.

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[–] Nobug404@geddit.social 13 points 1 year ago

He isn't US born.

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.world 63 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Imagine losing your arbitrary blue check mark because you didn't buy enough ads on a platform that no one really uses anyway.

[–] Solarius@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

this is the gold checkmark for brands, not the Twitter Blue sub checkmark

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[–] ZombieZookeeper@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago

Someone was dropped on his head as a junior billionaire.

[–] Lightor@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Wait, wait, wait, lemme get this right.

Problem: They were low or revenue. Response: Increase API costs

Problem: API costs are too high Response: People started scrapping Twitter

Problem: People are scrapping the site Response: Make users sign in to view tweets

Problem: People have to sign in to see any ads too Response: Tell companies that if they don't spend enough on ads they will lose verification.

I mean, what's next?

[–] Dark_Blade@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Problem: Brands start leaving Twitter

Solution: Increase the price of Twitter Blue

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[–] matthewmercury@reddthat.com 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

“Oh, ay, you got yourself a nice, beauty-ful brand over here. You got your followers, you got your eggs. Very nice. It would just be a cryin’ shame if somebody was to

impersonate it.”

[–] GonzoVeritas@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The "X" stands for Extortion.

I'm sure the ego-less CEOs in large corporations will take kindly to being extorted. (/s)

[–] MilitantAtheist@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Imagine what this must look like on the inside.

You're a software engineer at Twitter. You keep getting these weird tasks that you know are stupid, but you keep doing them just to see where the hell this bullshit will end up.

[–] Zetaphor@zemmy.cc 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And you haven't already quit because you're on an H1B/GC visa, and so your residence in the US is tied to your employment, effectively making you a corporate owned slave.

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[–] krakenx@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Imagine being the person who last Sunday night got the call from Elon "I really like this random X logo. Redo the entire site right now and remove all of the birds and blue theming, and have it live in production by tomorrow morning."

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[–] jacktherippah@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Man, if you ever have a social media site you need to burn to the ground, Elon's your guy.

[–] foofiepie@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Repeat.

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

If I were a business that is under threat of this, my response would be "ok.". No business that actually cares about its image should promote on a website that's filled to the brim with bigots and nazis

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 19 points 1 year ago

Sooo... blackmail/coercion then...?

"Be a shame if you lost control of your brand on my platform, be a damn shame..."

[–] ArugulaZ@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

Twitter (ahem) "X" lost half its advertisers already. I don't think the site has the leverage to make such demands. If anything, it's going to push advertisers into the welcoming robot arms of Mark III Zuckerberg and Threads.

[–] gsa32@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That'll bring your advertisers back

[–] paintbucketholder@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So Elon is now going for the severed horse head under the bedsheets approach to persuade advertisers?

That's a bold move.

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[–] ArugulaZ@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

Risky? More like suicidal. The Twitter brand hasn't so much been tarnished as blown to pieces by Elon Musk. If he thinks he's in a position to make demands of advertisers, when advertisers are already in life rafts heading for the shoreline, well, good luck with that. Have that band you're not paying play you off, because you're going down with the ship, and the advertisers aren't going with you.

[–] Nerorero@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 year ago

South park couldn't come up with this level of "because x therefore x"

[–] Buttons@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I heard that Twitter originally added verification because they were getting sued over imposters, so they added verification to delegitimize imposters and thus give less reason for others to sue them.

Now Musk is getting rid of verification en masse, so the original reason for the lawsuits will return.

Here's how to play it if you're a business who loses your Twitter verification:

  1. Allow yourself to lose verification.
  2. Make a backroom deal with some random person, have that person make a fake account for your business and buy verification. Have the person post some bad things under their fake and verified account.
  3. Sue Twitter since they have verified the fake account and removed verification of the real account, and are thus committing libel.
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[–] blackkn1ght@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So what is stopping the companies from just paying the 9 bucks for the verified status and telling the muskrat to sod off?

[–] Anomandaris@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.

Blue checkmark and gold checkmark are different things.

[–] saegiru@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Seriously, why is it even a thing anymore? It's really sad that people are still even using the service. I understand the stories, because a train wreck is hard to turn away from, but why would you still want to be on board the train? Literally no one should be on that hellsite.

[–] faintedheart@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How to shut down a well established business under an year.

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[–] MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

"I just reinstated a pedophile. Now pay me to put your ads on my SHIT" ~Elon "fascists are my best and only friends" Musk

[–] sirnak@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

This look more and more like a speedrun on how to bring down a well established platform in under a year.

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