For the low low price of
The blue tick thing is so absurd – the point of it is supposed to be verification, so if you make it for money instead, what is the point of having it? What does it tell anyone? “I pay Twitter $8 a month for this blue check mark thing.” Yes, and? You might as well put your monthly bus pass in your profile.
A wave of new paid blue tick accounts impersonating influential individuals and brands has led to chaos and confusion on Twitter.
Fake “verified” accounts in the names of politicians, celebrities, major organisations and businesses started appearing on the platform on Thursday.
Twitter suspended many of them, but the company’s rapidly changing attempts to address the issue added to the confusion.
…
One of the most disruptive accounts impersonated US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and declared “insulin is free now”.
The company had to say no it isn’t. Awkward.
Experts worry that the harm caused by a lack of trust in Twitter’s verification system could come to the fore during events such as mass shootings, terrorist attacks or natural disasters, where Twitter is often used by local authorities, police, emergency services and journalists for accurate information and advice.
That’s the thing. Twitter started out as a kind of toy, but it became a lot more than that.
There are a lot of issues about this. A couple of phony verifications have caused shares to tumble for significant companies, Eli Lilly (pharma) and Lockheed Martin (defence).
https://fortune.com/2022/11/11/no-free-insulin-eli-lilly-casualty-of-elon-musk-twitter-blue-verification-mess/
That’s scary in itself, that companies could possibly be made bankrupt by some mischievous tweeting, with losses of jobs. Also says something about capitalism itself, that it is based on a kind of trust, which of course has been breached severely in the past (eg Enron), causing economies to collapse and recessions. It’s the same scariness, the sense of fragility, as an electricity blackout, when we realise how much we rely on infrastructure we take for granted.
Twitter did start out as a kind of toy – social media did that generally – then developed into a new, and highly significant form of communication. The analogy is often made with the early days of printing – that no-one could guess its significance, and its power – which in Europe led to the Reformation and murderous religious wars for a couple of hundred years. It is appalling that this power should be in the hands of a vain, touchy billionaire who regards himself as a kind of philosopher whose thoughts on geopolitics (i.e. the war in Ukraine) should be attended to seriously.