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.
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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.
Bro what is elon doing???
At this point, I’d say: Providing entertainment to the internet while also helping grow the fediverse
Having never been on twitter myself I’m especially entertained, watching and laughing from a far corner of the internet
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
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.
I wasn’t really involved with social media back then sadly, but yes I did get that general impression. Before all the toxicity really overtook it around 2020 it did seem quite pleasant.
Shame really, corporate greed taking something quite nice and milking it so hard it’s absolutely ruined. Then again, it gives way to things like bluesky so i guess it has its upsides!
See that’s the thing …toxicity DIDN’T take over, you just heard about it more.
This internet hate machine loves to pretend that the angry tweet screenshots they see reposted over and over are representative of the site as a whole while all the funny tweet screenshots they’ve laughed at are one in a million. But if you look at the usernames on the political ones it’s usually the same handful of people…like that guy who starts every other tweet with “Holy fucking shit, Trump just…” Or the Brooklyn dad guy
Thank God i just got suspended from it for absolutely no reason
A suspended account can’t be deleted without appealing your suspension, and I’m pretty sure no one even looks at those with Musk in charge.
So suspending accounts keep them as users. They’re not active users, but it’s better than nothing.
And honestly wouldn’t be the craziest shit Elon’s done this week. So he might actually be randomly suspending accounts to lock them in
I think the combination of sheer incompetence and his overlord bosses wanting to kill Twitter. Which is wild to me, since it could have been used as a propaganda tool for him ultimately worth more than the money he paid for it, despite the ‘worth’ of the company. The guy lives in a bubble with yes men surrounding him. He is the epitome of the meme “is it me that’s wrong? - no everyone else is out of touch”.
A right-wing propaganda tool needs people outside of the right wing to look at it. He’s far too embedded into that space to be able to appeal to other groups.
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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Surely there are easier ways to destroy it without making himself look really, really dumb.
I don’t think it’s they deep, I think he’s just quite stupid.
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Hanlon’s Razor shouldn’t apply to businessmen because acting machiavellian and feigning ignorance is in their interest. But he has so thoroughly ruined his “real life Iron Man” reputation, that I doubt that this is some master plan. Even his other companies have lost value due to how bad he is fumbling this.
Yeah he definitely could have slowly killed the platform without humiliating himself like he is
Hanlon’s razor is just a bad rule. Applying it would, for instance, let the entire Trump administration off the hook for the way they sabotaged everything they were in charge of. Were incompetent? Mostly, yes. But they were also malicious.
Remember back in 2015 ~ 16 when we thought Trump was playing 4d chess, but it turned out he was really actually that dumb all along? It’s the same with Musk. We want to believe that someone who’s had so much success has a secret plan or something, but sometimes they really are just stupid chucklefucks
I’m not saying this to be an asshole, because I’m happy that you got to the right conclusion eventually, but I have to clarify for history’s sake: if you thought Trump was playing 4D chess in 2015-2016 then you were being duped. Most of us understood what he was from the get-go. Claims of 4D chess have always been stupid.
Again, I’m happy that you figured it out. Everyone makes mistakes. But “we” didn’t think he was playing 4D chess. The hypothesis about Musk/Twitter above is hardly the same.
Pleased don’t lump me in with those people, I was only using “we” in the figurative sense. I’ve been anti-trump longer than many people on this site have been alive
Fair enough!
If Elon bought it just to sink it, he would have just bought it, then shut it down.
He’s trying to build his ‘financial superstore’ idea from 20 years ago and it will be disastrous in a way that hasn’t even been seen yet.
Wait until this idiot starts implementing money transactions in Twitter and thousands of users suddenly have their bank accounts drained or worse.
It’s only a matter of time before something so bad happens that all the nonsense that he’s already done will be a footnote to the really big story.
Is he legally allowed to just shut down twitter?
Yes. It’s a private company.
But he has obligations from his debtors
The value of TSLA is more relevant to his debt financing than whether Twitter is operating or not.
Sure, but that’s another matter. If a laundromat has no desire to operate any longer, does it have to continue just because it has debt? I don’t think so.
But why? If Twitter is something he and his friends do not like it would be a better move to censor everything instead of pushing the users to other Twitter alternatives and spread the same message over there. Controlling is more valuable than pushing the users away.
Because, as an authoritarian regime, there is no way to meaningfully control and censor twitter unless you take the Great Firewall of China approach and even then, that is a very difficult to implement solution.
So the next best solution for an authoritarian to stop an unwanted message from spreading is destroying the platform, even better if it’s through a private, tenuously connected proxy, who you could plausibly deny connection to.
there is no way that rich people could be some form of authoritarian aristocracy that sees themselves as divinely ordained the most capable leaders in existence because they have a lot of money and act on this belief…
Eh, with Elon, I prefer to assume stupidity over malice, because he also had already done shit to hurt his own image before he owned Twitter. Who was he being malignant against then? Himself? To own, uh, his supported??? Everything falls in place by just doing the single logical step of “he dumdum”.
What about stupid malice, or maliciously stupid? :-)
Does a bully think being a bully hurts their image?
As an extreme narcissist, he can’t fathom the idea that anything he does can hurt his image. Surrounded by devoted minions, everything he does boosts his ego. He’s mauling Twitter, and thinks this projects a powerful image of himself.
I never liked this guy, I think he’s an narcissistic spoiled brat, but even then I can’t believe he could possibly be so stupid to think that things like throwing away the Twitter brand for “X” make sense.
Didn’t he offer to buy it so he could sell a bunch of tesla shares without sinking the value? And then he tried to back out, but was forced to buy it.
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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Have you heard of MBS? He’s…something.
They would’ve had to convince Musk though to take a huge hit to his credibility and ego with this, which I can’t see him agreeing to.
He is ensuring his place in history as a seminal business case study.
I can think of two explanations.
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He wants to intentionally run Twitter into the ground and destroy it. Probably because people were mean to him on it or something
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He’s completely lost his mind and is just being stupid.
Hanlons Razor makes me think it’s 2
For the first one, just shutting it down would have been enough.
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He’s got a really big loan payment to pay in October, everything is about that to keep it going for another year
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Extorting his advertisers, it seems. It’s hella funny.
Because he knows nobody is going to want to buy more ad space on a site that is (or at least was) restricting how many posts users can scroll through.
tHe SmArTeSt MaN iN tHe UnIvErSe. Doing small brain things again
He previously said that Twitter was in the red when he bought it. So pretty much everything he’s been doing has been clearly aimed at either reducing Twitter’s expenses or increasing its revenue. Better to have a smaller company that is profitable than a bigger company that is not profitable.
Whether it’s working or not, time will tell. But that’s the likely motivation behind most of it.
It’s the result of brain damage from Covid.
Something about this move makes me feel like he was bragging to somebody about how he managed to own a single letter domain, and his conversation ended up somehow here, with him doubling down on what wasn’t even a good joke to begin with.
This is purely speculative, obviously, but it just makes me think it’s him putting his money where his mouth is to save face to someone else (who is likely bemused at best)
The most generous thing I can think of is that it’s a social experiment to see just how many ways he can undercut a successful brand and platform before it completely implodes.
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?
Problem: Brands start leaving Twitter
Solution: Increase the price of Twitter Blue
Problem: Decrease of Twitter Blue subscribers
Solution: Sue every other competitor for alleged infringing Twitter’s trade secrets
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He even sued the attorneys for twitters previous board members because they sold the company to him.
I don’t know how that one slipped under the radar.
wait wait wait, lemmy get this right
The pun was there the whole time!
“The pun is coming from inside the building!”
Problem: …
Response: Obliterate one of the most established logos and a verb “to tweet”
Problem: My ego still hurts from not getting to use that single letter domain I got 20 years ago.
I wish they were scrapping it, as opposed to scraping it.
What’s next is Elon standing at a red light holding a piece of cardboard telling you to buy Twitter Blue or he’ll key your car
People wanting a blue checkmark must own a Tesla.
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Just a few more failed businesses and in about 50 years he’ll be all set to run for POTUS as the Republican nominee.
What a shame he was born in South Africa and isn’t eligible.
for some reason, i don’t think that would stop him from trying anyway and then throwing a tantrum for being ineligible.
I’m not convinced the GOP wouldn’t nominate him, and that the current SCOTUS wouldn’t rule he was eligible to run.
They would probably just yell out something about Obama and then simply declare him the president.
Edit: Someone already said this 6 hours ago. Even other people see this ridiculous situation as totally possible.
Yeah, I get the feeling that he’d get nominated anyway and the stance would be “well we can’t do the whole election over again, so let them run”.
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.
What if the US annexes SA, would he be eligible?
why would the US annex SA
why would the US have the opportunity to annex SA even
To get access to Lesotho. That fully enclaved country has been protected long enough by South Africa and it’s time to let 🦅 Freedom™ 🇺🇲 ring.
Next is Luxembourg and Vatican City. Pope better watch out for Uncle Sam.
Look, the US has far higher priorities than those small countries
They really should take on Liechtenstein once and for all
doesnt SA have oil?
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.
What makes you think he can’t, and won’t, do that?
He’s not a natural born citizen of the United States of America.
The constitution never actually defines what natural born is. So it would be entirely up to SCOTUS. The same SCOTUS that currently has several GOP members being openly bribed for decisions. For shockingly lower amounts than you’d expect.
Aha yeah I forgot about that weird rule
What makes it weird? What countries allow naturalized citizens run for president? (Genuinely curious)
AFAIK at least France and Germany
We dont have to imagine given that Trump was president for 4 horrible years.
Musk strikes me as being potentially even worse than him, though
He isn’t US born.
How’s he doing on rapes, domestic violence, and paying for abortions? That’s still a requirement for that party last I checked
Ah, that’s a good point. Well, he’s still got ~50 years to work on those if he hasn’t started yet.
Imagine losing your arbitrary blue check mark because you didn’t buy enough ads on a platform that no one really uses anyway.
this is the gold checkmark for brands, not the Twitter Blue sub checkmark
There’s a gold checkmark too? Lol
Huh? TIL!
I just had a a quick check and @CocacCola has a gold star but @CocaColaAU does not.
Sony and Uber do, Colgate and Purina do not.
If large multinationals with effectively limitless marketing budgets can’t be brothered ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Isnt it used by 350 million plus people?
Ironically, Musk also wanted us to believe that 50% of those were bots just a couple months ago…
This look more and more like a speedrun on how to bring down a well established platform in under a year.
Like a real life Brewster’s Billions
Someone was dropped on his head as a junior billionaire.
Getting low on popcorn…
Send a tweet out to Orville Redenbacher.
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Xcretions
x-cretions
Oh, like a little kiss
No, ex as in former sexual partners, because you aren’t doing them any more.
But that’s stupid and I’m not calling them that.
The whole thing is stupid
Elon should have x’ed some questions before making such a stupid decision. Who’s going to use that? I have a feeling some people will just stop even talking about the platform or anything that happens on it when it sounds so dumb to talk about.
Have you tried demanding $1000 of popcorn or you’ll stop eating?
I have not. Given the likelihood of getting what I’m asking for, might be a means of losing weight.
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
So Elon is now going for the severed horse head under the bedsheets approach to persuade advertisers?
That’s a bold move.
Is bold the word we’re looking for here? It’s definitely A move.
I think it’s more along the lines of the “it’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for 'em” sentiment
Every day I think the dumpster fire can’t get any bigger and every day I’m proven wrong.
That’ll bring your advertisers back
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.
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.
TIL people deported their slaves when they were unruly.
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.”
This is how distopias happen. Hell this is how fascism sneaks up on people if they aren’t paying close attention.
At that point you’re not even going to try to explain it to your boss any more. Just watching the whole thing burn might be more entertaining than trying to save it from certain destruction.
Man, if you ever have a social media site you need to burn to the ground, Elon’s your guy.
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.
All legitimate companies have already left twitler
