> why he sought to rob the "checkmarks" of their status symbol by commoditizing it, rather than coming up with some new symbol for paying customers.
Why do paying customers need any public symbol?
In other words, why not get rid of blue checkmarks altogether, create a subscriber system with benefits, and... that's all?
It seems to me that the only reason to reuse the blue checkmarks and publicly award them to subscribers is to entice people to pay to get some of the previous cachet of the blue checkmarks. Otherwise, what's the point? It's inherently misleading, and that's the point, the goal of the new system.
Remember when Musk forced the blue checkmarks back on non-paying celebrities, whether they wanted the blue checkmarks or not? It's difficult to interpret that as other than a ploy to restore some prestige to the checkmarks and mislead Twitter readers about who has paid for them and who has not.
I don't know, but they do? It's a keepsake of sorts, and it drives adoption if you see that the people you respect are paying for the platform. Almost every platform with optional subscriptions does that - LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.
As for the rest of your comment, I don't understand why you want me to defend Elon. As noted, I think this was childish. But I don't think it deserves regulatory intervention of any sort.
Indeed. Apparently the name has been changed now to "Premium", but originally it was "Twitter Blue". The blue checkmark was the selling point.
> Almost every platform with optional subscriptions does that - LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.
TIL there's a Reddit Premium symbol in user profiles. However, the Reddit Premium symbol is not displayed in posts and comments, which makes it very different from Twitter's system.
> I don't understand why you want me to defend Elon.
Why do paying customers need any public symbol?
In other words, why not get rid of blue checkmarks altogether, create a subscriber system with benefits, and... that's all?
It seems to me that the only reason to reuse the blue checkmarks and publicly award them to subscribers is to entice people to pay to get some of the previous cachet of the blue checkmarks. Otherwise, what's the point? It's inherently misleading, and that's the point, the goal of the new system.
Remember when Musk forced the blue checkmarks back on non-paying celebrities, whether they wanted the blue checkmarks or not? It's difficult to interpret that as other than a ploy to restore some prestige to the checkmarks and mislead Twitter readers about who has paid for them and who has not.