Twitter Blue 'Paused' After Thing Everyone Said Would Happen Happened

Nobody could have foreseen it.

Twitter Blue — Twitter's new and very terrible paid subscription service that gives anyone who can cough up $8 a blue checkmark just like a real celebrity, politician or journalist — is being put on pause because the thing everyone said would happen is happening. People have purchased Twitter Blue accounts and are impersonating celebrities, brands, politicians and other famous people.

And we must say, there have been some pretty good ones.

 @JoshuaPHilll  

 @JoshuaPHilll  

And the one to rule them all:

That one was not without consequence — not only did it cause Eli Lilly's stock to plummet, costing them billions, but all other insulin makers with it. We'd feel super bad if they were not price-gouging a product that was meant to be free for all to begin with.

There is also a fake Glenn Greenwald account that is still going pretty strong.

Apparently, Musk and the three people left working at Twitter were unable to act quickly enough to kill all of the fake accounts and have stopped allowing people to subscribe to Twitter Blue in order to play catch up. Rolling this out without a full security review has also put them in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission, which they apparently didn't realize because Musk fired the people in charge of complying with the Federal Trade Commission's consent decree. This could cost him billions of dollars. 

It was very easy to predict that this was what was going to happen, especially once it was announced that these new "verified" accounts wouldn't actually be, you know, verified .

When I got my fancy check mark (Wonkette itself does not have a verification checkmark, because it is very very bad and Twitter said it could not have one), I had to send in a picture of my id next to my username and the date along with proof of my own notability. Upon being verified, I had to set up two-step password verification so that every time I sign in I also have to sign in on my phone (which was a new thing when they implemented it). I was told that I had to have my real name as my Twitter name (that was changed) and was told I was not allowed to change my handle and that I would lose my checkmark if I did. All of this was meant to ensure that I was who I said I was, and that other people with checkmarks were who they said they were. That's why this was not a problem before this week. That's why the people talking about a supposed "verification black market" where people were selling blue checks for $10-$15,000 is nonsense. They wouldn't have been able to change the @ .

These people just need a credit card. That is why this happened. Musk was so eager to take down the people he didn't like that he didn't think a single part of this through.

This is all happening because Elon Musk is a billionaire who couldn't buy cool. He thought that if he bought Twitter and crowned a bunch of his acolytes to be the new celebrities and media personalities, that he would finally be cool — but that's not how things work. You can't just demand that people be fascinated by what Jim42378923 has to say about cryptocurrency. You can't just buy a whole new world where people who pay you fealty are the new celebrities and the new media, thereby making you officially cool. That's not how anything works.

As much as he and his acolytes may not like it, the reason most people go on Twitter is just to see what celebrities they like are saying — and maybe have an actual conversation with them! — or to follow current events. I saw one person with a newly purchased checkmark complaining that there was something wrong with the world if people were more interested in what Keanu Reeves said than what she said, or if they cared if Actual Keanu Reeves was saying something or an impersonator was.

Actual Keanu Reeves is not on social media.

I have seen this posted multiple times in all seriousness. 

Musk is now being very clear that the whole point of all of this is to destroy actual journalists who get paid for their work in order to replace them with "citizen journalists" who pay him .

None

— Philip Fitzgerald (@Philip Fitzgerald) 1668193817 

He's doing things in a very stupid way and ignoring all of the obvious flaws in his plans because he's so desperately mad at the "media elite" and wants to punish us. It's not working out too well so far.

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