It’s tough to write about all the changes at Twitter at the moment.
Not because of some sentimental attachment to what the platform was, or frustration at what Elon Musk may or may not do to break it (which he could well be very close to doing).
No, it’s hard to write about Twitter because as soon as you write that they’ve changed something, they change it back, or add something new, or Elon sends a tweet to ‘kill it’ before it even goes anywhere.
Just this week, for example:
As you can imagine, it’s difficult to provide an accurate account of what’s going on when it changes as soon as you’ve hit publish – which, really, is pretty emblematic of the Musk takeover at the app so far. Fast-paced chaos, which seems to be hurtling inevitably towards a crash of some sort.
Or maybe Musk is just too visionary for anyone else to see it.
Either way, Elon’s certainly bringing attention to the app, and with usage numbers rising, that could be good. Maybe.
But then again…
Musk’s $8 verification plan is now slowly being rolled out, and that’s led to a raft of imposter accounts sporting shiny new verified checkmarks, sparking varying degrees of confusion.
As you can see in this example, many of these accounts, at a first glance, look legit, with the blue checkmark, which users have come to recognize as a sign of trust in the app, giving them a degree of authority.
Twitter says that it’s ‘aggressively’ removing these imposter profiles (clicking harder on the delete button), but with half of its staff gone, this still seems like a significant vector for misinformation. And one that could have been 100% avoided – but that’s not, for better or worse, how Elon operates.
As Elon himself has said:
So despite this being a risk to users, who may well get duped by such scams, Musk’s concern here is that Twitter will still get the money – though as one user who exploited the new blue checkmark option pointed out, if an account is canceled within a month, some credit card providers will refund such charges anyway, reducing the financial risk that Musk believes will act as a deterrent.
There’s also this:
Musk’s half-baked verification-for-a-fee program – which is not actually verifying anything – is already causing confusion, and essentially empowering some of the worst elements in the app.
And as noted by Katie Notopoulos of BuzzFeed News, his vision of this new verification scheme creating a better system for eradicating hate speech, because people are less likely to risk their account when they’re paying $8 per month for it, won’t work either.
But Elon’s going to try, he’s going to push ahead with ‘dumb things’, and fail a lot along the way. Which he has the right to do, given he paid $44 billion for the app.
But the concern within that is the users who’ll get hurt along the way, as Musk risks their safety for his own gain.
And now, with virtually all of Twitter’s former top leaders gone, the challenge of reforming the app into something new seems to have risen substantially.
Click Here For The Original Story
Recently, SEC Chair Gary Gensler issued fresh warnings about cryptocurrencies amid Bitcoin's surge to a…
Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Athena here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear…
By Virma Simonette & Kelly Ngin Manila and Singapore14 March 2024Image source, Presidential Anti-Organized Crime…
Technology has disrupted many aspects of traditional life. When you are sitting at dinner and…
Reports of suicides, missing bodies, sexual kompromat and emptied bank accounts as fake sangomas con…
A South African woman has been left with her head in her hands after she…