What If You Had A Checkmarkpocalypse And No One Cared?

Musk hoped to force celebrities and organizations to pay for Twitter. Doesn't seem like it's happening.

When Elon Musk first announced Twitter Blue, the subscription service that allows Twitter users to pay him $8 or $11 (if they have an iPhone) a month for an emoji, his big selling point was "Power to the people: Your account will get a blue checkmark, just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you already follow."

The whole idea was always stupid and predicated entirely on the misunderstandings and resentments Musk and his acolytes had about the verification system and users with "blue checkmarks." However, it's about to get even more stupid, since as of today, Musk will be taking the checkmarks away from the "celebrities ... you already follow" unless they, too, agree to pay $8 or $11. Organizations and companies are also expected to sign up to pay $1,000 a month for verification, plus pay for verification for their employees, at $50 a month a pop.

Given how deeply unappealing this sounds, he tried to sweeten the pot by also announcing that only Twitter Blue subscribers would show up in user's "For You" feeds, that their comments would be featured first in replies, etc. etc.), but since everyone hates the "For You" Feeds, many noted that it would just let them know who they should be blocking. 

Here's what was supposed to happen, originally. The Musk Loyal were supposed to get to buy the verification checkmarks and get to feel like real celebrities — or at the very least, like media people like me, whom they've never even heard of.

That didn't happen, both because people could tell who paid for Twitter by clicking on the checkmark on a user's profile or by using an extension (that also allows people to block Twitter Blue subscribers) and because the checkmarks were never actually what people thought they were. They weren't about "clout" — they were a useful tool that allowed people to know if someone was a real celebrity or politician or an established journalist. That was the point of them.

Today is meant to be the last day of free "legacy" checkmarks. We were all supposed to crack, we were all supposed to feel terrified at our own future irrelevance and cry out "Oh no! We can't live without our blue checkmarks! Please, take our money!," but since those checkmarks are completely worthless emojis that mean nothing, no one gives a shit. News organizations, celebrities and Twitter power users have all issued statements saying that they are not planning on ponying up for them.

Via Forbes:  

NBA star LeBron James and NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes have both said they would avoid paying Twitter Blue’s $8 fee. Other NFL players who have said they would not pay for Twitter Blue include New Orleans Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas and Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Darius Slay . Author Stephen King said the platform “should pay me.” Actor William Shatner questioned Musk’s decision to create a subscription service, noting he has been on the platform for 15 years “all for bupkis.” Actor Karl Urban said he is “opposed to spending money on social media.” Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander said he would leave the platform once he loses verification. Former news anchor Dan Rather said he would be “happy to pay for a lot of things” except Twitter Blue. Model Chrissy Teigen called for Twitter to “just take the checkmark already who cares.” Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell also indicated he would not pay.

The White House has announced that it will not be paying for employees to be verified.

"It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service. Thus, a blue check mark will now simply serve as a verification that the account is a paid user," said White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty.

Faced with the fact that many of the largest organizations and advertisers on the site would not pay for verification, the company has decided to allow the 10,000 biggest organizations and 500 biggest advertisers (if they even have advertisers) to keep their legacy checkmarks for free. However, major news organizations like The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Politico, Vox and CNN have said they still won't be paying for verification for their employees.

In a letter to staffers, the LA Times explained that they wouldn't be paying for them either, explaining that "verification no longer establishes authority or credibility." The Washington Post explained "It's evident that verified checkmarks no longer represent authority and expertise."

 Several major celebrities like Shonda Rhimes, Sara Bareilles, Toni Braxton, Gigi Hadid, and Téa Leoni left the platform when Elon first announced his plans for the site and haven't been back since. Money has also left Twitter — the company is now valued at less than half of what Musk paid for it, probably because all of the major advertisers left.

The thing that Musk and others never quite understood is that celebrities are celebrities with or without "checkmarks" and that people who are actually paid to write for a living are not going to pay Elon Musk for the privilege of writing on his platform. That's just not how any of this works. He's made the checkmarks useless and worthless and the only people he can sell them to are his own reply guys.

The vast majority of Twitter users don't tweet. It's different from other social media sites in that way. Lots of people just use it as a way to keep up on the news or keep up with their favorite TV shows or celebrities or sports. Musk assumes that he can secretly replace the actual news media and actual celebrities with Folgers Crystals and no one will know or care. But they will. If you want to see what a website made entirely with content people paid to have placed looks like, allow me to refer you to The Frisky, the site I worked for before I came over here. It used to be a pretty cool ladyblog, back when ladyblogs were a big thing, but now it's just just a bunch of random content no one cares about or would read on purpose. Crazily enough, you just can't take a site that people like and replace all of the writers with crappy pay-to-play content and expect anyone to continue reading it.

Over half of Twitter Blue subscribers have fewer than 1,000 followers and are likely not producing the kind of content that is going to replace legitimate news organizations and celebrities for people. It's also not clear what the appeal will be for them once having the checkmark won't make them feel "just like celebrities." The whole thing is truly a trash fire.

The scary thing is that we're getting to a point now where there just is not a lot of free news out there. Most news media sites are paywalled now. We're going into a presidential election and people are not going to be able to trust that what they see on the site, they're not going to know whether a news organization is real or someone just bought a checkmark to make it look like they are legit. I don't care about losing my precious checkmark, but I'm sure gonna miss being able to be sure that people and organizations are who they say they are.

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