Twitter to start charging for verified accounts

The way things are going, I'd be a bit surprised if Twitter is even a thing by the start of the new year.

Valerie Bertinelli’s trolling of him is hilarious and I’m loving every minute of it. Last I looked, her acct is still up!

Despite many saying they’re not going anywhere, I think there will be a pretty significant exodus. A good number are moving to new platforms to use as their own sources of info, but staying to combat the huge disinfo plan for now through Tuesday - even those with plans to leave. There has to be reliable info somewhere, and it sure as hell doesn’t look as if it’ll be Twitter.

At the rate things are going, it’ll continue to be a massive shitshow for the foreseeable future. This latest “installation” of the right wing propaganda machine won’t do what they’d hoped, though. I firmly believe that.

wait, so I can pay $8 and be Donald Trump?!?! WHEEE, I can do some serious damage to his reputation. Oh wait, that won't really work, will it :0

I can't stand Elon Musk.

That said, I could care less about Twitter. I only read the ones that are posted here, and they do give me a chuckle sometimes. But for the most part, I view it as extremely negative, and I don't need that in my life on a daily basis. If I'm wrong, let me know.

nah, that will make the hate speech more prominent because they won’t have a problem paying to have it seen. They are proud of their bigotry now, they’ll gladly pay to get it pushed forward

Twitter, like other social media is dependent on having a well-curated timeline.  I was initially hesitant, but during Covid signed up.  I expected to let it go, but then the Ukraine war started and so then I started following a couple lists made by others.  Twitter is where the people who *really* know things participate.  The problem with research papers or books is information is delivered slowly.  The problem with news articles is that there isn't very much two-way communication.  But on Twitter, infectious disease experts, former high ranking military leaders from multiple countries, experts in small countries you only hear about in passing... these people will talk to each other, and you can read what they say.  If you, regular person, have a sincere question, they will answer.  They will promote their articles and research papers, with explainers for the things people get stuck on, etc.  If you are really interested in learning a wide variety of global stuff, in real time, it's amazing. 

And you become to see them as not faceless, encyclopedias but as people.  They will post about their cats, or music interests, art, food, travel and you can find out some pretty interesting stuff, like we do when librarylady posts stuff.  When this Twitter stuff blew up one of the posts I saw was along the lines of, "Where else can you see the former President of Estonia, and an US former NatSec expert talk about the best songs of 197X during replays of Casey Kasem's American Top 40?"

   

apparently twitter has not been profitable for years, maybe ever. they have lost advertisers and even with the recent lay offs, they need to make money or file for bankruptcy at some point. i hear of people migrating over to Mastadon. it's membership is nowhere near twitter's but clearly people are going somewhere else. i think jack dorsey, the founder of twitter, is also trying to get another platform up and running.

i think Elon will get bored and move on to something else. he was building super tunnels under los angeles to help combat the traffic situation but i just read that the project was scrapped and turned into a parking lot. twitter may become another parking lot soon if Elon can't keep it afloat.

I think this will be rolled back in the not too distant future. They will have to figure out other ways to monetize, but pay-for-verification doesn't make any sense - at least not this implementation of it. The whole purpose of verification on Twitter or any other social media platform is that the person is who they say they are. A nominal monthly fee allowing anyone to be verified doesn't actually achieve that.