Opinion – Musk should not be charging for Twitter’s blue tick status

The obvious (or so we thought) flaws

Musk’s statement about ‘lords & peasants’ indicates that he views blue ticks on Twitter predominantly as status symbol, which just isn’t the case for many of us.

Again, he believes what he’s doing is democratic, in that it gives anyone the chance to experience the benefits of a blue tick. In all likelihood, however, any positives in that sense will be outweighed tenfold by logistical oversights.

Let’s think about why the ticks became a thing in the first place. Introduced in 2009, the system was born out of necessity as several influential figures were being impersonated and defamed online.

In the years since, the blue tick has become a way for users to quickly ratify that the information or opinions we’re being presented with are genuine.

We’re free to agree or disagree with the sentiments being put out there, but we know for sure they’re coming from an actual news source, professional athlete, comedian, billionaire tech tycoon, etc.

Twitter’s own phrasing around blue ticks from 2013 states: ‘Verification is currently used to establish authenticity of identities on Twitter. The verified badge helps users discover high-quality sources of information and trust that a legitimate source is authoring the account’s Tweets.’

Knowing better than most how ridiculous the internet can be, it seems impossible to think that the constantly-memed Musk can’t see the potential red flags on this. Maybe he’s actively choosing to ignore them, which is worse.

pic.twitter.com/kGncG7Hs3M

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

The death of Twitter news?

While some merely view Twitter as a dumping ground for memes, akin to Reddit, people are becoming increasingly reliant on the app for their daily news bites

Pew Research Center found in a study that as many as 53% of US Twitter users are actively searching for news updates. By comparison, only 44% of Facebook users, 37% of Reddit users, and 30% of users go to those sites for this reason.

This is why advertisers spend so much on Twitter. If fans of an upcoming game are Tweeting about it in droves, for instance, you can bet that its publisher is vying to maximise ad space.

Brands depend on Twitter to insert these ads into relevant conversations away from misinformation and hate speech, and blue ticks helps to sift through the constant onslaught of user generated data.

It just seems odd and counter-intuitive to tear up a format that already works purely to create a new revenue stream, which, by his own admission, is what Musk is doing.

Knowing that Twitter is the most visited social media site for news, there should be concerted efforts to clamp down further on unreliable or dodgy information, not to open the floodgates entirely to trolls or folk pushing deceptive agendas – so long as they’ve got $8 USD spare.

More to the point, having to pay for the privilege of being more easily recognised won’t go down well with burgeoning content creators and journalists already helping the current flow of information.

If Musk isn’t careful, his first action as boss could make Twitter the polar opposite of the open forum, town-square utopia he has pushed over the last year.

Update (09/11): Musk added an extra grey verified tag for those who already have blue ticks, and then reversed the decision hours later. Suffice to say, the system is pretty confused.