[HN Gopher] Twitter Blue for $8/Month ___________________________________________________________________ Twitter Blue for $8/Month Author : BryanBeshore Score : 240 points Date : 2022-11-01 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | danpalmer wrote: | The good: | | Twitter should not be editorally curating people through | verification, making verification only about ID and being a real | person is a broadly good change, as long as it's not necessary | for participation. Brands, celebrities, those in the public eye | could benefit from this. Needs to be implemented with care and | ideally with a branding change so as not to confuse users as the | semantics change. | | The bad: | | $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. | There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. | See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services | have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, | if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming | users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal | cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero). | | The ugly: | | Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards | those with means rather than those contributing to the | conversation. At best this will reduce conversation quality on | Twitter, at worst this is ripe for abuse. | seydor wrote: | There's nothing good. When everyone can buy a checkmark, it | becomes nothing. | | The next step is "only allow replies from blue checkmarks" | | both are bad ideas, and solely because of musk's obsession with | bots. Without a mob to prop up people with retweets, twitter | will be useless. You cant have the good parts without the ugly | parts | matwood wrote: | > When everyone can buy a checkmark, it becomes nothing | | Where does it say everyone can buy a checkmark without | verification? I read this as everyone can be verified, which | is a good thing. And, it will go a long way to killing off | the bots. | jmathai wrote: | I assume a small fraction would pay $8/mo for Twitter. | Limiting who can reply seems like a useful feature - I think | this already exists for "only people I follow". | oceanplexian wrote: | Everyone can't buy a checkmark. Bots will be almost | impossible to scale at $8/mo, which means if you deprioritize | or hide content from bots without the check, Twitter has a | realistic shot at eliminating the bot problem. | seydor wrote: | checkmarks mean prestige, exclusivity, and validation. | public figures and journalists love prestige, they live for | it. twitter just removed one thing that made it attractive | to them. being able to buy it means it s useless for | anything other than removing spam | | that s a very odd way to remove spam . and personally i | dont see twitter bots because i dont go searching for them. | Musk is completely obsessed with the wrong problem | carbine wrote: | checkmarks ALSO mean you are who you say you are. making | them a feature of Twitter Blue (note: _one_ feature of | Twitter Blue) eliminates any status that might have been | conferred in the past, yes, but it also goes a long way | to sorting legitimate from fake users. | ribosometronome wrote: | >making verification only about ID and being a real person is a | broadly good change [and continued desire to pay $8 a month] | michaelmior wrote: | > See: every streaming service. | | Plenty of streaming services have ad-supported versions that | are in this price range (e.g. Hulu, HBO Max). I don't disagree | that having ads at all on Twitter Blue is bad, but I'm not sure | the comparison with streaming services works. | bigmattystyles wrote: | But every streaming service* has to pay for content, either | license or create - on Twitter, the users generate the | content. In my mind the costs to acquire content are much | lower for twitter. They have other technological challenges, | some similar, some dissimilar to video streamers, but content | wise, Twitter doesn't pay for anything. | | * Youtube premium has a mix of user content and licenced | content but doesn't have ads (other than live reads which | don't count here) | danpalmer wrote: | Fair enough. Neither are available in the UK. | | My thinking was based on YouTube Premium, Apple TV, Netflix | (currently), 4oD, Disney+, etc. | watwut wrote: | I dont think twitter is anywhere near Netflix or even | youtube premium in terms of what it provides. And I am | saying it as someone who do actually uses twitter (unlike | half of HN who claims to never use it). | [deleted] | MallocVoidstar wrote: | Will they actually be doing ID verification? Binance is one of | the investors, so it might just be "if you can pay $8 you can | be whoever you want, at least for a while". | cinntaile wrote: | I don't get the link. Why would Binance be in favour of | impersonating others for $8/month? | MallocVoidstar wrote: | Crypto people are generally not in favor of providing your | government ID for things. "Pay $8 in crypto and also give | us your identification documents" will not be popular. | amadeuspagel wrote: | You do in fact need to prove your identity if you want to | trade on binance. (KYC requirement.) So I don't see why | they would have a problem with making people prove their | identity for a bluecheck. | matwood wrote: | Last I checked, Binance does KYC. | mattr47 wrote: | Many streaming services have ads in their lowest tier now. | Paramount is the first I can think of. | taude wrote: | Netflix has ad-tier coming for $7/month. HBO Max costs like | $16/month. I get ads for Hulu, but that costs only $.99/month | on Black Friday deal. I'm paying $80/year for Disney, and I | think Apple is still charging only $5/month. So....I don't | know, $8 doesn't feel that ridiculously out of line priced. | | [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-ad-supported-tier- | price... | bydo wrote: | Those companies all spend money to create and/or license | content. Twitter seems to want users to pay $8/mo _and_ | continue to see ads for the privilege of creating the content | that brings users to Twitter? | lupire wrote: | Brands don't post to be nice. They are posting ads for | their business. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Yes? It's actually better for Twitter because they can get | pocket most of the money. | | Companies aren't voluntarily charging barely enough to | cover costs - they're being forced to do it by competition. | Normally, they'll charge you as much as they can get away | with. | | It would be news if Twitter, or anyone else for that | matter, decided to voluntarily charge less for the sake of | fairness to the users. | tinus_hn wrote: | Apparently Twitter needs 20000 employees to let those users | create the content; they need to get paid! | xemdetia wrote: | I'd also say that $8 a month is a great price to astroturf for | a month. Also why is the idea of Twitter monthly even sensible? | Who plans their Twitter identity as a power user month to | month? Why is it not just $100 a year? | dboreham wrote: | It probably is. | perrygeo wrote: | > See: every streaming service | | The key difference is that streaming services purchase valuable | content and resell it. There is obvious demand and the market | clearly exists. | | Twitter provides little in the way of mass entertainment, | unless you enjoy watching people argue with trolls in an | algorithmically-created drama. The content is not created by | twitter. There is no obvious market demand; the vast majority | of people on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if | it was free. | slg wrote: | >making verification only about ID and being a real person is a | broadly good change | | Where does he say there will be any verification around ID? | Twitter needs to make sure that I can't just name my account | @WhiteHouseCommunications and pay $8 to get a blue checkmark. | The whole point of the blue checkmark was to personally review | those accounts to make sure they are who they say they are. Is | Twitter still going to put in this manual effort for a greater | base of verified users especially after they seemingly plan to | downsize staff? | empressplay wrote: | They don't need to, your 'full' name is just locked to | whatever's on your payment method. Problem solved. | adrr wrote: | That's cool. I can set the bill name and address of my visa | gift cards for online purchases. Sure hope they do this for | $8/m. | Fomite wrote: | This. | | The conflating of an authentically derived status ("This | person is real") with a paid form of status both defeats the | purpose of the first, and is somewhat telling about a | particular mindset. | chipotle_coyote wrote: | Yeah, that strikes me as the real problem with this plan. | Setting aside all the criticisms that can be made of how | Twitter has handled verification (and "de-verification") in | the past, the point of being verified was to signal "Twitter, | the company, has a high degree of confidence that this | account is who or what they claim to be," not to signal | "Twitter, the company, is getting eight bucks a month from | whoever this person is". | fossuser wrote: | I was really hoping for no ads! Huge bummer on that front. | danpalmer wrote: | Just use an unofficial Twitter client! | | I do wonder whether their days are numbered though. I can see | it going one of two ways - full ban of all third party | clients, or a far more open API. Musk is so unpredictable, | both would appear to fit his viewpoints on these things. | fossuser wrote: | I've tried multiple times and they're just bad imo. | cmelbye wrote: | > $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported | user. | | I don't think so. Twitter's ARPU from advertising in Q2 2022 | was around $4.50. ARPU from advertising in the US was more than | $14. | | Users likely to subscribe at $8/month (power users in western | countries) are more valuable than average for advertising. | | No ads for $8/month would probably be a very bad idea. | codemac wrote: | Exactly, thank you. I was going to say - $8/mo per US user | would be a failing ad business. | 411111111111111 wrote: | YouTube is 13EUR for ad-free and they're actually hosting | videos (High bandwidth) AND share over 50% of this with the | content creators. | | $8 is a lot - relatively speaking. | [deleted] | tonetheman wrote: | paying 8 dollars for a checkmark is also a bad idea... | putting trump back on twitter is also a huge bad idea... | | he is full of bad ideas and will bring twitter down with most | of them | | though I like the idea of bringing vine back. | mosdl wrote: | half the ads, not no ads. | Philip-J-Fry wrote: | Twitter Q2 average daily monetizable users: 237.8 million | | Q2 revenue: $1.18 billion | | Q2 revenue per monetizable user: $4.96 | | Revenue per user if they're paying $8 a month is $24 per | quarter (there's 3 months in a quarter!) | | That's definitely more than the profitability of the average | user. If I got the numbers wrong then please show me how. | fluidcruft wrote: | > Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases | towards those with means rather than those contributing to the | conversation | | I'd assume the $8 high-rollers can still retweet and amplify | the poors. | legitster wrote: | > $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported | user. | | Than an _average_ user. But if you are a power user, you have | just sent a valuable marketing signal. | | > Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases | towards those with means | | Strong disagree. Twitter currently only exists as a bullhorn | for already famous people, or a few lucky early adopters. | lupire wrote: | I mean, being too online, at home, in sweats, doesn't make me | a big spender. | Fomite wrote: | "Strong disagree. Twitter currently only exists as a bullhorn | for already famous people, or a few lucky early adopters." | | Not if you curate it at all. | | My two Twitter accounts are dominated by...my fellow | academics on one of them, and niche hobbyists on the other. | watwut wrote: | I dont think early adopters mattered for years already. | costcofries wrote: | "biases towards those with means rather than those contributing | to the conversation" | | I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who | actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of | being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough | value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your | contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage | more now. | | If you aren't that user, then maybe you don't derive enough | value from conversation because you are mostly a consumption | user. So you continue as you do today, consuming and | occasionally replying to tweets but hardly ever having your | response seen or acknowledged. | wsatb wrote: | I think you're missing the point. It's not about value, it's | about means. $8/month could mean a lot or mean very little to | your finances. That doesn't mean the person that can afford | it is any more valuable to the conversation. | Dracophoenix wrote: | But the people who would pay $8 dollars, regardless of | finances, derive enough value from being bluechecked in the | first place. Paying the money would fulfill would fulfill a | higher rung of their hierarchy of needs than it would for | most others. | watwut wrote: | Nah. Basically, who will loose are topical experts who | tweeted about what they knew well about. Layers tweeting | about law, developers tweeting about frameworks, academics | tweeting about crypto, viruses, history. These wont pay and | will be less visible. | | Who will pay will be grifters and ideologues. | frollo wrote: | I totally disagree. If you actually contribute to a | conversation (which means saying something which is | considered relevant by the people taking part in it - not | just saying something random) people will reply to you or | share your views or just add a like (or platform equivalent), | thus making your voice heard. | | On the other hand, paying to boost your tweet regardless of | its actual value is going to be a great tool for spammers, | troll or people who really care more about saying something | than they care about its utility to the conversation. This | will definitely drive down quality (and I'm ready to bet that | browser extensions to just block out anything from paid users | will start popping up). | danpalmer wrote: | > I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who | actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out | of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive | enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now | your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even | engage more now. | | I disagree. Diverse input results in better conversations - | less of an echo chamber, less black and white thinking, more | visibility for other viewpoints, more empathy. | | There is diversity among people who want to spend $8/mo on | Twitter, but there is far more by definition among all | Twitter users. Plus you're likely to discriminate against | already marginalised groups in most regions, as marginalised | groups (whatever the categorisation) tend to have less | disposable income. | [deleted] | andsoitis wrote: | > Diverse input results in better conversations | | But how many different people are necessary to give the | diversity of thought on a particular topic? I bet it is not | many, certainly fewer than 100, maybe 50, or on some topics | even just 20. | christkv wrote: | If anything Twitter has shown that the current model is | just mob rule | [deleted] | DeRock wrote: | > $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported | user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none | at all. | | Adverse selection. The people willing to pay to remove ads are | probably your most profitable users to show ads to. | danpalmer wrote: | That's a good point, but while I don't have any data, I've | heard anecdotally that for services that implement paid user | tiers with no advertising, they always make much more from | paid users than ads, on the order of 5-10x. While there is a | distribution on how much ads users are worth, it's not enough | to overcome that difference _at scale_. There are a small | number of users who are worth $$$$, but they're a small | amount of absolute revenue because there are so few. | vasco wrote: | You're making the same point that you're replying to. The | juiciest users pay, so the non-paying users are the penny | pinchers that convert way less on ads, so the ad revenue is | obviously very low compared to the revenue from the paid | users. | | Similar to how people self selected into iOS and android | and to this day its way more effective to advertise to less | price sensitive iOS users than Android users with cheap | phones, though the effect was even larger in the early | days. | ProfessorLayton wrote: | The people willing to pay, the heavy users, are also the | people most engaged and posting content on the platform. | Content that twitter needs for less heavy users to consume, | bringing in eyeballs for advertisers. | | Continuing to show ads to paying content creators is double- | dipping. | nightski wrote: | I'd expect those two to intersect for sure, but I imagine | there are plenty of people with enough disposable cash that | enjoy twitter but contribute very little. Or maybe I am | just an extreme outlier :) | Ajedi32 wrote: | Agree with most of this, but: | | > Paying $8 [...] At best this will reduce conversation quality | on Twitter | | Really? That seems completely contrary to my experience. In | every online community I've seen, a higher barrier to entry has | always been positively correlated with the quality of the | conversation. | | Not saying there won't be downsides to this, but I very much | doubt a lower quality of conversation will be one of them. | drawfloat wrote: | But it's not a higher barrier to entry - you can read and | respond freely. It's a higher barrier to having a good | experience, which I can't think of many successful examples | of to be honest. | concinds wrote: | > respond freely | | You can already filter out non-verified mentions and | replies. Presumably that's not going away, and will be used | by far more people after this change. It very much is a | barrier to entry. | joegahona wrote: | > You can already filter out non-verified mentions and | replies. | | How? | rysertio wrote: | I guess we'd need a couple of more ublock filters. | rhaway84773 wrote: | But the verified mention is no longer a verified mention. | It's a paid mention. | | And the people most likely to pay to ensure that their | responses are seen broadly are narcissists and people who | want to sell you stuff like their latest get rich quick | scheme, newsletter Subscription, etc. | | Actual verified users will dwindle in comparisons and the | value of filtering out non "verified" responses will | plummet. | thaumasiotes wrote: | Every commercial product and service is an example of that. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Yup. I'm gonna keep drumming this up: most markets today | are supplier-driven. The "barrier to having a good | experience" gets higher, and the experience gets worse, | and there's shit all you can do about it, because you're | only able to choose out of what's on the market, and the | market isn't serving lower barrier / better experience | options it did a month, year or decade ago. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > and the market isn't serving lower barrier / better | experience options it did a month, year or decade ago. | | That's irrelevant, and very often false. But the options | offered by the market at any given time are generally | better at higher price points, which is, oddly, exactly | what the commenter upthread was outraged by. | TeMPOraL wrote: | They wrote: | | > _It 's a higher barrier to having a good experience, | which I can't think of many successful examples of to be | honest._ | | The way I read the poster is that they think being asked | to pay more will create worse experience, which is | implied to be stupid. Except it isn't, it's literally | what's happening in every market all the time. Getting | people to pay more for worse product is entirely normal, | and the way it usually works is by removing the option to | keep paying the same amount for the product they | currently enjoy. | matwood wrote: | > you can read and respond freely | | Sure, but I hope as mainly a reader of Twitter this change | comes along with a box I can check that says 'only show | Tweets from people I follow and those who are verified'. | Overnight, most of my bot issues are fixed. And, any people | I don't want to hear from again are easily blocked. | [deleted] | ypeterholmes wrote: | morsch wrote: | Virtually all streaming services still have ads at the paid | tier: sponsored content in YouTube videos, product placement | everywhere, athletes that are living billboards. | type-r wrote: | SponsorBlock is key for YouTube | celestialcheese wrote: | > See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming | services have ads, but for most online content - video, | journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just | nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, | particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is | essentially zero). | | Even after your edit, this isn't true. NYTimes includes ads in | their paid subscription products. AFAIK, most premium news and | editorial still includes ads. It's not nearly as many or as | intrusive as the free pubs like NYPost, but there's still ads | even though I'm paying $20/mo for NYTimes | lupire wrote: | "Half" ads is extremely common. Disney and Netflix are doing | it, and even if you don't have platform ads, the content embeds | ads. | deltree7 wrote: | Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that you | paid money. | | There is an entire generation of entitled people who grew up | in 0% VC-funded businesses who are accustomed to getting | great products for free who have to adjust to the reality of | cost of capital. | SahAssar wrote: | > Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that | you paid money. | | The publishers of those paid for the content, paid for | editing, paid for the physical medium, paid for physical | distribution. | | Twitter is distributing short pieces of text, some images | and video on a medium that is famously cheaper than | everything that came before it, while not paying anything | to the authors and has no editors. | anarticle wrote: | I thought they would go for Something Awful style forum | registration, $5 to join, and if you're banned, $5 to join again. | | Probably this will increase SNR of twitter to some degree, we'll | have to see! | Imnimo wrote: | I don't really grasp the value proposition here. I can have | "Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to | defeat spam/scam", but is that valuable to me or to my audience? | If I'm a regular no-name user, do I care if I'm lost in replies | and search? And if I'm the Steven Kings of the world, that other | users want to see content from, does it do more harm to me or to | Twitter if my posts are hidden because I'm not paying $8 a month? | | It feels like I'm being asked to pay $8 to solve a problem that | belongs to Twitter (too many bots), not a problem that belongs to | me. | mymythisisthis wrote: | For people like Steven King, if he posts something on Facebook | his fans will re-post it on Twitter, and vice-versa. If too | many things trend on other platforms, but not on Twitter, | people will leave Twitter because it is not keeping up. | Waterluvian wrote: | "Half as many ads" fascinates me deeply. | | Has a business ever publicly quantified how many ads you get? | Does YouTube say, "we expose you to an average of x seconds of | commercials and y pixels of static ads"? | | How do I know what half should be? We've all been there: "it | feels like YouTube has cranked the ads way up lately..." Will | "half" just become "full" when "full" gets doubled next year? | ftio wrote: | I think he wanted to say "No Ads" but didn't have enough data | to commit to that yet, so he's anchoring on "half as many." | Let's see how it shakes out. | TremendousJudge wrote: | Why do you think that? | ftio wrote: | From a user perspective it's messy and confusing. What does | "half as many" even mean? The experience is only different | in degree, not in kind. There's less value, both real and | perceived, in such a position. | | It's hard to imagine that the conversation started from | "half as many." My hunch is that it started as "no ads" and | somehow backed down to "half" for one reason or another. | | A couple reasons I can imagine are: - They could've | justified No Ads at the rumored $20 price point. Cut the | price in half? Add half the ads back. - They want to make | room for a $20 SKU later and need to reserve some features | for it, which could include getting rid of all ads. - They | want to anchor at "half" so that "No Ads" sounds even | better if they change their minds down the line. | | Or some combination of all those. | TremendousJudge wrote: | Why do you have that hunch? Do you presume good will? My | hunch says, what if the conversation started as "how do | we make users believe there will be less ads"? | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Should one presume bad faith here? | freejazz wrote: | Why would you presume good faith here? | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Burning Twitter to the ground seems quite | counterproductive, given the debt that was assumed for | the sale. Misguided sure, but bad faith? I generally tend | to assume that most people do things in good faith. | freejazz wrote: | It's business, good faith isn't really the issue... this | isn't your neighbor asking for some eggs.... | | >"Burning Twitter to the ground seems quite | counterproductive" | | Good faith or not, it doesn't mean someone can't be | misguided. which is why I asked, who cares about their | faith?? | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Because I am not a heavy enough Twitter user for this to | affect me at all, so I'm just curious to see if Musk's | gamble works. He's gambling that the network effect is as | important for Verified users as it is for non-Verified | users, which is not a bet most other creator-based social | media sites have made. Judging by the number/temperature | of comments you've made about this topic over the last | two days, I think you're a lot more emotionally invested | in this topic than I am. I'm just here with popcorn. | freejazz wrote: | I'm not a twitter user either, I'm not sure what that has | to do with viewing Musk's actions as either being good or | bad faith. That seems like a limiting and bizarre way to | view things. Similarly, I didn't accuse you of being | inappropriately emotionally invested... I'm more | fascinated that people see someone doing something wildly | illogical and then say to themselves, "well it's Musk, he | must have his reasons"... yeah, I'm sure he has his | reasons. That doesn't mean they are good and I have no | idea why anyone would assume so given how all of this | transpired. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | > Similarly, I didn't accuse you of being inappropriately | emotionally invested... | | Sorry I think I read something that wasn't there, | apologies. My bad for being jumpy. | | > I'm more fascinated that people see someone doing | something wildly illogical and then say to themselves, | "well it's Musk, he must have his reasons"... yeah, I'm | sure he has his reasons. That doesn't mean they are good | and I have no idea why anyone would assume so given how | all of this transpired. | | For me it's curiosity. Twitter always seems like the | struggling social media. Unable to really make a revenue | despite it's disproportionate influence in developed | nation discourse. At this point, I consider Musk to be a | loose canon and I would not do business with him unless | costs appropriately reflected risks. | freejazz wrote: | Because Musk fanboys have a deep drive to provide rational | explanations for the myriad of idiotic things he states | tshaddox wrote: | It's pretty well-known for traditional television broadcasts, | right? Shows are edited and even scripted specifically to | provide the right amount of slots for ads. | RobAtticus wrote: | It's pretty much on a steady climb upwards though. So a show | today probably has more ads per half hour than one 10 years | ago, 20 years ago, etc. | mateo411 wrote: | It's much harder to measure television ad impressions than | digital ad impressions. | | Publishers charge for digital ad impressions by the 1000. | It's easy to measure because usually they receive an HTTP GET | request indicating the ad has been served. | | For TV that uses traditional broadcasts you have to sample | and scale. This is what Nielsen and other ACR companies do. | weberer wrote: | Yeah, that's why I don't watch TV any more. | alligatorplum wrote: | On the Android Twitter app, I get an ad every 4 tweets on my | timeline. So "half as many ads" would make it an ad every 8 | tweets. | linuxftw wrote: | You will be shown no ads from the hours of 8pm-8am, a bunch | during your busiest times, or some such. | | In any case, how are people going to verify on their end | they're getting what they paid for? Maybe in 10 years they'll | have a class action resulting in everyone getting a dollar | back. | tedunangst wrote: | Oh man, that's genius. Like a radio station that plays | fifteen minutes uninterrupted at the top of each hour. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Has a business ever publicly quantified how many ads you get? | Does YouTube say, "we expose you to an average of x seconds of | commercials and y pixels of static ads"? | | Broadcast television and radio have always done this. How could | they do anything else? | lupire wrote: | They announce this is to users as part of the offering. But | of course it's measurable. | baby wrote: | It's easy really. You start a counter, whenever it's above zero | you stop displaying ads until the counter goes back to 0. | bombcar wrote: | I'd love for it to literally be "half ads" - whereas Twitter | Plebeian gets a full add, Twitter Bluesbros only see the top | half of the ad. | | Could result in amusing ads where the top half is aimed at the | richies and the bottom half has "stick it to the man" discounts | that only poors would see. | Waterluvian wrote: | That's silly and hilarious and now I want to see it happen. | eastbound wrote: | Actually, user segmentation and giving discounts to poor | people only _on the same ad_ is absolutely brilliant, it's | elon-muskesque style of brilliance. It's everything together: | "Stick it to the man", the rich can't really complain, it's | correct i terms of user segmentation, and it's a good joke | too. | praisewhitey wrote: | On the instagram feed every fifth post is a sponsored post | Waterluvian wrote: | (and on top of that, every third post isn't sponsored but is | still selling something) | TeMPOraL wrote: | (and on top of _that_ , most of the organic content is now | locked in time-limited stories, with a good chunk of them | being reposts of TikTok influencers out there to definitely | sell you something) | james_pm wrote: | Every other "Story" is an ad lately. | CobrastanJorji wrote: | Google used to have that one thing that said "pay us and we | will make some of the ads on the Internet go away." You paid | Google, and then Google eliminated ads on their websites but | also ads on any website that used Google to provide their ads, | and Google paid those websites as if they had shown those ads. | It was a really nice idea, but it had the downside of only | affecting ads on a random (from the user's perspective) subset | of the Internet. Also had the downside that if you're the sort | of person willing to pay to make ads go away, you're probably | also a happy ad block user. | type-r wrote: | Google Contributor | jjfoooo6 wrote: | In other words, it is that it's going to be very difficult for | users to intuitively understand what "half ads" means and why | they should pay for it. | | It's a completely nonsensical compromise. Musk's product ideas | for Twitter seems to assume that what everyone wants is for | Twitter to be more complex, with more knobs to fiddle with. | fnordpiglet wrote: | Clearly not. It would be a touch screen control. Knobs are | too simple. | Waterluvian wrote: | Because every engineer knows that 99% of the customer base of | their products are fellow engineers. | lupire wrote: | "half" means less annoying. It's not complicated for users. | Dylan16807 wrote: | It doesn't mean "less annoying" in a meaningful way when | the baseline can change drastically and without warning. | TeMPOraL wrote: | There's a simple way to make this legible to the user: | instead of slashing ad frequency, eliminate half of _ad | surface_. I.e. if there are N places on the page where ads | are being served, turn off half of them for the paying users. | This will be an obvious difference, and remain so even as the | ad intensity /frequency increases. | cycomanic wrote: | Yes and be just as anoying. I'm not sure that anyone would | see a value of just seeing half the amount of ads on a | page. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Half of ads is strictly more valuable than all of them. | Whether or not it's worth $8 is another question, but | people _still_ forget it 's all a supplier-driven market: | there is, and is not going to be, an option to pay $8 and | get no ads. You choose out of what's being made | available. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Strictly more valuable, sure. But if it's only 10% less | annoying, there's very little incentive to buy. And | adblock is an option sitting in the wings. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _But if it 's only 10% less annoying, there's very | little incentive to buy._ | | Right. But that $8 doesn't only buy you halving the ad | load, but also all the other things like better reach and | the "I'm a paying user, I'm better than you non-paying | ones" checkmark. I mean, if it works on GitHub... | | > _And adblock is an option sitting in the wings._ | | Yes, but! Most people use Twitter through _the app_ , and | blocking ads there isn't as simple as having your tech- | savvy friend install uBlock Origin in your browser. | Adblocking in apps is, even for techies, something | between extremely sophisticated and downright impossible. | james_pm wrote: | Thought the same thing. How do you prove top me as the user | that I'm seeing "half as many ads" now that I'm paying $8? No | ads is easy. They are there or they aren't. | | I'd considering paying Twitter $8/month if it was no ads. Or, | you know, I just keep using Tweetbot for $10/year and there's | zero ads there and a straight reverse chronological timeline to | boot. | modeless wrote: | Yeah the only way this could work is if the ads were replaced | with a banner that says "thanks for paying", so you can | actually see how many ads were removed. Which is a better | experience than seeing an ad but worse than an ad blocker. | alberth wrote: | $20 vs $8 | | This is Elon tactics 101. | | You anchor people high with leaking outlandish (incorrect) | pricing, that way when you officially announce the (always | intended) pricing - it seems like a deal. | Havoc wrote: | >half as many ads | | I bet they can sell this twice. Once here and once to advertisers | that want to advertise to the more exclusive crowd | __derek__ wrote: | Weird. I thought they removed the sign-up gate, but it blocks me | from reading the whole thread. | chatterhead wrote: | This is off. | | Should be: $1.99 for every user with optional $7.99 upgrade to | validated ID/Blue checkmark. No ads. Way fewer bots. | | Focus completely on functional/feature engineering and dismantle | advertising system. | | Branch out into VOIP/Email services. Total communications | platform instead of "social media" should be his direction. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | They make much more than $2/user from ads. Since it's already | not profitable I don't see how it's going to work | chatterhead wrote: | The cost to acquire each of those users is more than $2/user | because the cost of their advertising infrastructure. | whywhywhywhy wrote: | Good riddance, the previous system was painfully toxic. | dgudkov wrote: | I'd like an option to see only tweets/replies from Twitter Blue | holders. | Timja wrote: | I never would have given Twitter my real identity. I always made | sure to not reveal it to them. By not using my real email, not | giving them my phone number etc. | | And now they offer me to _pay_ for it? | | I guess this would mean I would have to pay _and_ have to give | them more information about my identity? | | That is an even better ploy than having people pay to test and | train self driving cars. | rconti wrote: | I wonder how big the exodus from Twitter has been-- (seems | noteworthy from what I've seen)-- and whether it will be covered | by journalists? They seem to have already decided that Twitter = | news, ignoring the fact that most people don't use Twitter at | all. | | If (say) 5% of people leave Twitter, will journalists notice? Of | course not, they'll just keep pretending like "people on twitter" | == "people". | skilled wrote: | There is no exodus. People are slaves to impulse and comfort | and if you don't understand that on a fundamental psychological | level then why are you commenting on the topic in the first | place? | caldarons wrote: | In a certain sense it feels like it's the right direction. But if | you are essentially paying 8$/month how can you justify still | displaying ads? | | I guess what I am trying to say is that for 8$ every month you | should be getting more than just a status symbol (which possibily | not that many people care about anyway) and be stuck with ads. | | Also, if Twitter is serious about creating a revenue stream for | creators it should focus on creating valuable experiences for | users that incentivize loyalty to the creators and not hand out | verification status (which would become insignificant anyway if | everyone has it). | colinmhayes wrote: | It's not just a status symbol, it also boosts your posts. If I | had to guess, the people likely to pay for this are power users | in wealthy countries, aka the highest value users an ad | platform has. Seems unlikely that they're monetized at less | than $8 a month. | fnordpiglet wrote: | All this malarkey reminds me why I would rather read HN than | twitter. | supernova87a wrote: | How do you declare what country you're in to get the pricing you | "deserve"? | fullshark wrote: | Elon's vision seems not very different from the one any private | equity firm doing a LBO would have: Maximize revenue and cut | costs however you can to pay down debt. | dan-robertson wrote: | The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There's a small number | of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is | an important part of their work or life. If you're a journalist, | being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you | should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some | business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed | maybe media publications should be paying for the blue checks for | their staff. But on the other hand, these people are going to | represent a large part of the draw of Twitter and so maybe | Twitter should be paying them instead. | | But other people use Twitter in different ways. If you mostly use | it as a social network between your friends you might not care | because they'll presumably see your tweets because they follow | you rather than because they found them in search or whatever. | | If you're using Twitter as a forum for discussions about some | topic of your interest, maybe you'll end up feeling crowded out | in replies by people with the check. But if you're at risk of | being crowded out then maybe Twitter isn't working so well as a | forum. And I think that if eg A follows B and B retweets you, A | should see your tweet whether or not you have a check. Maybe that | isn't so true with the non-chronological feed. If people in the | community follow you then, depending on the dynamics, your | opinions could still be spread via retweet rather than getting | lucky in your position in the replies, no? | | If you're some reply guy, maybe your tweets should be downranked | but then if you're serious about it then I guess you'll pay. | RosanaAnaDana wrote: | > If you're a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of | your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like | the customer of some business software | | I think this completely misunderstands why social media | products like Twitter are successful. | | Those journalists (or gamers, or comedians, or porn stars) that | you're arguing should be considering $9 a month as cost of | business, they are the content creators and the only | justification for a business like twitter having any value at | all. Principally, twitter is a network, and these users are the | highly connected nodes of that network. How fast will | superconnectedness decline without them? Superexponentially. | | The people with blue check marks aren't your customers or | clients: they are your product. | whywhywhywhy wrote: | Think you're over-estimating their value, if they were | posting their thoughts elsewhere without the blue check next | to their name no one would be engaging with it, it's honestly | such bad content. | freejazz wrote: | Oh, you mean like the articles in the newspapers that they | regularly publish? What exactly do you think a journalist | does, just post on Twitter? | carbine wrote: | how's that going for them | TeMPOraL wrote: | I think you're wrong. The network is stronger than that. | | Yes, those highly-connected nodes could easily kill the | network... if they all coordinated to leave at once. Which is | a real risk here, because of how high-profile and | controversial the issue is right now. But normally, they're | just as glued to the network as everyone else. Perhaps even | more so, because... | | ... they aren't creating content for fun. They're creating it | to make money off the audience. So they have to stick to | where the audience is. | | People with blue check marks _would like to think_ they 're | special and valuable to the platform, but they're not. At | this scale, they're a commodity too. They play a different | role on the platform, but for the platform, users with | different roles is just what makes the whole thing tick and | print money. | dan-robertson wrote: | If you're a journalist (or your other suggestions) then | you're basically using Twitter as free advertising to (a) | your followers and (b) people who read your tweets which have | been retweeted. Having people coming towards the way you | actually make money is probably worth a lot more than $8 per | month to you, even considering that journalists aren't so | well paid (the idea of blue checks getting paywall bypass | could be very good for journalists too - they could end up | more directly getting value out of people coming to their | work from Twitter). | | Paying $8 per month for this free advertising seems pretty | great. How much would it cost to send this out via actual ads | or eg mailchimp (but of course it is much easier to have new | people see your tweets than your marketing emails)? | soulofmischief wrote: | Each and every one of these arguments seem to be forgetting | the fact that $8/mo is a _ton_ of money in some areas, | prohibitively so, and this policy is exclusive of such | journalists, users etc. | | Blue checks should never be pay to play. They weren't | designed that way. The problem is the ambiguity of the blue | check leads to arbitrage that it seems all parties are | interested in cashing in on. If Twitter is our modern Greek | forum, it certainly seems like a classist and exclusive | landscape. Elon's backtracking about price parity just | illuminates the capitalist nature of the entire thing. | Charge what we can, not what we should. | | We should ask ourselves if we should be placing Twitter's | financial needs over the social and intellectual needs of | humanity as a whole. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | > We should ask ourselves if we should be placing | Twitter's financial needs over the social and | intellectual needs of humanity as a whole. | | 25% of US Adults produce 97% of tweets on Twitter. 75% of | Twitter users don't post a single tweet per month. 42% of | Twitter users that produce < 20 tweets / month find | civility issues with the platform, and only 27% of them | feel politically engaged. Twitter has nothing to do with | "humanity as a whole". It's obvious that the group that | uses Twitter is niche yet highly engaged. Matters | relating to Twitter's "social and intellectual needs" are | only relevant to highly engaged Twitter users. | | https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/1-the- | views-... for all the stats | soulofmischief wrote: | This is normal for a community. These statistics | naturally fall in line with the Pareto Principle, and the | concept of the vital few. [0] | | > Twitter has nothing to do with "humanity as a whole". | It's obvious that the group that uses Twitter is niche | yet highly engaged. | | You are confusing posting on Twitter with using it. The | vast majority are lurkers who still consume information | and then regurgitate that information in real life on | other platforms. The statistics you provided don't paint | an accurate picture of the "usefulness" of Twitter in | modern public discourse. | | Do you have a better popular example of a modern day | forum? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _Each and every one of these arguments seem to be | forgetting the fact that $8 /mo is a ton of money in some | areas, prohibitively so, and this policy is exclusive of | such journalists, users etc._ | | And those areas don't proportionally don't matter to | Twitter. Even so, the _very next tweet by Musk_ , in | reply to the linked one, says: | | > _Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing | power parity_ | | So that addresses this complaint. | | > _If Twitter is our modern Greek forum, it certainly | seems like a classist and exclusive landscape. (...) We | should ask ourselves if we should be placing Twitter 's | financial needs over the social and intellectual needs of | humanity as a whole._ | | Since when is Twitter our "modern Greek forum"? | | Just until a few days ago, being critical of Musk was | strongly correlated with the belief that social media | companies are private entities, free to do as they wish | (and in particular ban whoever they want). It's ironic | how fast things change :). | freejazz wrote: | Conventional journalists don't get paid more based upon the | number of views their articles get | enumjorge wrote: | To your point here's a tweet from Stephen King that was making | the rounds where he protests the idea that he should be paying | Twitter instead of the reverse: | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144 | encryptluks2 wrote: | And I agree with Stephen King. YouTube rewards content | creators and provides a strong platform for creators to | market themselves. Twitter provides a platform for brain | farts and now they want to charge for a blue checkmark. I | guess Musk believes if people are stupid enough to believe in | his lies before that they'll be stupid enough to pay for a | blue checkmark. | | Wait until you see how they begin marketing the | subscription.. it will be ridiculous. Might as well be trying | to sell snake oil. | drstewart wrote: | How much profit does YouTube make? | Melting_Harps wrote: | > Might as well be trying to sell snake oil. | | Look at LV 'hyperloop' [0], and people who paid upfront for | FSD [1] and are issuing a class action lawsuit and re-think | what you just said about 'might.' I think this isn't about | Tesla or SpaceX or any specific company he is CEO of as | they are all amazing feats of tech/engineering, it's about | Elon's horrible PT Barnum type marketing that worked for a | bit but has lost all of it's luster at this point. | | 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htJcPEXn040 1: | jhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htJcPEXn040 | oska wrote: | Where does Stephen King go if he's not on twitter ? | | (Genuine question, not rhetorical) | tommica wrote: | I guess I am an outlier in this, but I don't think I have a | single "famous" person that I follow - maybe some bigger | figures in a niche area, but the people that have the blue mark | are not the draw for me. | | But when I do search for them, it is convenient to see the blue | mark to figure out what might be the account I am looking for. | encryptluks2 wrote: | I don't think it is convenient. These people have a website | or verified profile on Google to already determine which | social media profiles belong to them. All the blue checkmark | will tell me in the future is these people are dumb enough to | pay for snake oil. | dangerboysteve wrote: | I don't follow famous people. Way too much noise. I follow | dev and engineering stuff. | paxys wrote: | That's the core problem with this approach. Elon and others | have the idea in their head that Twitter is a social graph | where people come to interact with each other, and everyone is | relatively equal. So every user paying $X/mo to solidify their | place in the graph makes some conceptual sense. | | In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. A | tiny percentage of users are creators while the vast majority | are consumers. If you go by the rough count of their currently | verified accounts, only ~0.16% of monthly active users are | producing content of any real value. | | An average user (part of the 99.9%) isn't going to care about | any status or badges - they are only there to look at memes. | | Creators and influencers on the other hand are going to care, | but (1) there are too few of them for their $8/mo to make a | substantial difference to the company's bottom line, and (2) | the platform needs them as much as they need platform. | | So you really want to instead do the exact opposite - ask the | consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money. | s_ting765 wrote: | > So you want to instead do the exact opposite - ask the | consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money. | | I think it's only Onlyfans that can get away with such a | business model. | meheleventyone wrote: | Twitch, Patreon etc. etc. | | Arguably also Netflix, Roblox and free-to-play mobile games | run on this sort of scheme as well. | NationOfJoe wrote: | also i guess YouTube is that as well, Consumers pay with | attention to ad's, YouTube red, Channel members, super | chat. | paxys wrote: | Onlyfans may be an extreme example of it, but all such | successful platforms - YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch | and the rest - are paying their popular users _a lot_ of | money to stay there. | jonas21 wrote: | It may be true that only a very small percentage of Twitter | users are actually creators and influencers. | | But a far larger number of people think they are or aspire to | be influencers, and they're going to want the badge too. | arkades wrote: | Stephen King's tweet on that topic, to summarize: | | " $20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should | pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron." | | https://twitter.com/stephenking/status/1587042605627490304?s. | .. | bufferoverflow wrote: | He is bluffing. | slimebot80 wrote: | Totally right. | | And Musk's answer was to offer $8/m | | King wasn't talking about paying _anything_ | koonsolo wrote: | > In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. | | There is a very big difference between Twitter and YouTube, | and it's obvious once you know it. | | Look at the most popular people on twitter: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- | followed_Twitte... | | All celebrities outside of twitter. | | Then look at YouTube: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- | subscribed_YouT... | | Almost all made famous by YouTube. | | Twitter has no real "content creators", YouTube does. | causality0 wrote: | Yeah, if you got famous exclusively on Twitter it's because | you're a demagogue, not a content creator. | koonsolo wrote: | Can you name the MrBeast or PewDiePie of twitter? | threatofrain wrote: | There's not enough "room" to produce interesting content | _solely_ on Twitter vs YouTube -- you have to hiccup out | your value in segmented tweet threads. Thus if Twitter does | provide value to followers it is in referencing _outside_ | material. Elon is supposedly directing Twitter engineers to | go full-steam on reviving Vine so we 'll see if that can | turn things around. | Ar-Curunir wrote: | The vine crowd has long moved to Tiktok; even IG and YT | couldn't steal mindshare from them. Vine has no chance, | given that they're starting with a 6yr old product | paxys wrote: | > Then look at YouTube: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- | subscribed_YouT... | | > Almost all made famous by YouTube. | | I looked the top 50 in that list and maybe ~5 of them are | what you describe. The rest are big music labels, TV | channels, artists and other such independently popular | figures, not very different from Twitter. | koonsolo wrote: | PewDiePie, MrBeast, Kids Diana Show, Like Nastya, Vlad | and Niki in top 10. | | Great trolling. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | If you're famous, you'll almost certainly have a twitter | account, although there are obviously exceptions. The same | just doesn't seem to go for YouTube. Creating content on YT | is a _lot_ more time-consuming than creating it on Twitter, | of course. | xtracto wrote: | I always felt Twitter as "old man yells at cloud" kind of | communication. I've never seen proper "content" created (like | pinterest, tik tok, etc). Most of the "content" I see are the | asinine multi-post threads and text-pictures notices from | angry people/companies. | pyfork wrote: | I actually get a lot of unique ML information and news from | Twitter. | resoluteteeth wrote: | The "content" here is just tweets. It may not be "content" | in the way you are imagining, but it's still true that | almost all twitter users are using the site to view tweets | from a small number of people (call them content creators | or influencers if you like) with large numbers of | followers. | koonsolo wrote: | Sure, but that small number of people are already famous | outside of twitter. YouTube and TikTok creates new | celebrities, twitter doesn't. | ABeeSea wrote: | I'd argue this isn't true in sports journalism. A news | tweet from Woj, Schefter, Rappoport, or Shams has far | more reach than the same content in a random ESPN article | or sportscenter segment. Without twitter, a whole world | of addicted sports fans would have no idea who those guys | are. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | I guess it depends on what kind of content you're looking | for. One account I follow tweets what amounts to live | reviews of video games (often obscure) with video clips and | images. I think that's just as 'proper' as anything I've | seen on pinterest or tiktok. | initplus wrote: | For journalists it's not basically part of your job, it often | literally is! Many media organisations require their reporters | to maintain an active online professional presence on Twitter. | at-fates-hands wrote: | >> But other people use Twitter in different ways. | | Saw a roundtable about this and a film maker said it was really | hard when they're about to release a film and someone uses a | fake Twitter handle that's close to theirs releases the trailer | or footage before they wanted it released. | | Paying to have a blue check on their account would cut down | this type of piracy or release of trailers before the producer | wants to. They said it would be very worth it to maintain the | legitimacy of what they're doing. | | I'm assuming other types of creators would see the value in | being able to say, "If its not from my verified account, then | its not (me, my work, my companies work) and you should ignore | it." | davidcbc wrote: | If the barrier to a checkmark is $8 then all the scammers are | going to have checkmarks too | mjfl wrote: | and now we have more of a paper trail to stop them | neaden wrote: | The most common scam I see on Twitter is imposter | accounts replying to a real person with a link to some | crypto scam. Right now you can usually immediately tell | it's a different person since the reply doesn't have a | check mark, this system seems like it will make it easier | since the scammer can just get a checkmark. | encryptluks2 wrote: | Yes because most scammers provide their real information | when scamming | Finnucane wrote: | The power of Stephen King. | Overtonwindow wrote: | That's a reasonable price. There is a need for some people to be | verified to avoid impersonation. The vast majority of us do not | need to be verified. Also, just because a person is verified does | not mean they are credible, regardless of what their job is. | rideontime wrote: | His first tweet doesn't seem to relate to the rest. What does the | checkmark have to do with Blue? | eatonphil wrote: | Yeah I'm confused. Twitter Blue is a separate service that | anyone already could buy for $5/mo I think. Maybe he's merging | them together. | | However, the existing Twitter Blue is still being listed as | $5/mo. | MallocVoidstar wrote: | Pretty sure he's replacing the notability-based verification | system with "pay $8/mo to get a checkmark". | birdyrooster wrote: | He's trying to do what Facebook couldn't and charging people | for it. | PaulWaldman wrote: | What if, instead of a flat fee, blue checks were charged based on | their number of followers or the level of engagement with their | followers (how ever you'd quantify that)? | | This would align the value and goals for both Twitter and blue | checks. | bjourne wrote: | Any free software projects working on a distributed Musk-free | Twitter replacement? We could really use one RN. | ljw1001 wrote: | I think this worked well. | | Instead of conversation about how Elon would use twitter to | undermine democracy, civil discourse, whatever, everyone is | talking about what's a fair price to pay him to undermine | democracy, civil discourse, whatever. | watwut wrote: | I mean, yeah. But also, democracy and civil discourse are more | endangered outside of twitter then inside of it. If twitter | becomes bad enough, it will be next 4chan or whatever. | | However, politicians lying and gloating after basically yet | another domestic terrorist attacks, politicians trying to make | it harder for opposition to vote will stay. | atYevP wrote: | They keep solving weird problems in weird ways. My $0.02 -> | | They should have: | | 1. Created a new "VIP status symbol" icon (diamond?) for people | who care / need / want the prestige (charge for it or don't) - | I'd almost fork the existing checks over to it for simplicity. | | 2. Kept blue check for actual identity verification (this is a | real human). | | 3. Added features people care about (editing / etc...) to Blue | and charge for them. | | Tying the verification to features is...just odd. #sigh | whywhywhywhy wrote: | Bluechecks are the ones actually addicted to twitter, it makes | sense to put a paywall in front of them, not create a different | layer. | rcarr wrote: | Here is what the next big aspiring social media company should | put on their website. | | "$COMPANY_NAME is currently free to use. Unfortunately, we do | have employees and computers to pay for to keep things running. | When we hit 1 billion users, we intend to start charging all our | users a very small fee: 1 hour of minimum wage in whatever | country you live in for an entire year's access. For example if | you live in the UK, this means you'd only pay PS9.50 for the | entire year. If you live in Portugal, you'd only pay EUR4.38 for | the year. Your first year will always be free to see if | $COMPANY_NAME is right for you. | | Your IP address currently shows you're from $COUNTRY_NAME. This | means a year's access for you would be $COUNTRY_MINIMUM_WAGE. | This fee will only ever increase if your government increases the | minimum wage of your country and will always stay pegged to that | rate. | | This means that, regardless of where you live in the world or how | much you earn, access to $COMPANY_NAME only requires, at most, a | single hour of your time each year to continue using. This allows | us to keep the platform free from ads, tracking, and from wasting | money on useless VR products nobody wants. Help us build a | better, fairer future for everyone: not just shareholders." | colinmhayes wrote: | I really just think that this would mean people don't use the | service. The internet has shown again and again that people | will do practically anything to avoid paying for digital goods. | randomopining wrote: | Elon's Vision: | | 1. Charge $8/mon and a bunch of people will pay 2. Fire a bunch | of engineers 3. Twitter looks way better on paper 4. Flip the | company in 18 months when rates go down and market is better esp | tech | memish wrote: | A lot of people aren't groking what this means, even on tech and | startup savvy HN. Naval and Balaji said it well: | | Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a | utilitarian one. | | It elicits shrieks because it's more about leveling the playing | field than making money. | | https://twitter.com/naval/status/1587523978456748033 | | The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of | equality. | | The billionaire will end up abolishing the blue checks, in the | name of equality. | | roughly speaking: blue checks are about status and tech | billionaires about startups. It's old money vs new money. | | Old money wanted to kill new money. New money is wiping out the | status of old money. | | The blue check actually arose as an anti- impersonation tool. | Twitter was _forced_ to implement it after complaints. | | But people who are impersonated tend to be "important". So it | became a status symbol. Especially for writers. | | The one form of equality a journalist will always resist is the | idea that everyone is now equal to a journalist. | | But that's what universal verification does. Everyone who needs | one can pay for a blue check. Bots get taxed. Twitter makes | money. Establishment journos hardest hit. | | Further reading | | 1) @sriramk on social networks as games: | https://a16zcrypto.com/social-network-status-traps-web2-lear... | | 2) @eugenewei on status as a service: | https://eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service | | https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1587545600064507904 | suoduandao2 wrote: | Funny, I was just listening to Naval Ravikant talking about it | being better to seek wealth than status, because the latter is | a zero-sum game. hard to unsee that dynamic once it's pointed | out. | lupire wrote: | After subsistence, wealth doesn't provide value except as a | way to buy status. | lhnz wrote: | Not really true. You can buy better versions of products | and services. | mattgreenrocks wrote: | This is very astute, but I can't help wonder why people worry | so much about their status on the bird website. Actually | doing/making things in real life is pretty much guaranteed to | have a much higher return in multiple dimensions (incl. | status) than pretending like what happens there matters. | | It doesn't have to be either/or: make something cool, throw | out a link to it, repeat. | lupire wrote: | The only reason things matter is because they lead to | status. Skipping the matter is an efficient solution to | gaining status. | bumby wrote: | Don't humans generally value relative wealth, which would | also make it a zero sum game? | | E.g., someone in poverty today isn't particularly comforted | by knowing they have luxuries that former kings didn't have, | like plumbing, because well-being is tied to relative scales | ianferrel wrote: | They may not _feel_ good about their creature comforts, but | indoor plumbing is an objective luxury to a great extent. | | It is objectively better to not have to go out in the cold | to take a shit at night, even if you're "poor". | Georgelemental wrote: | A person in poverty in a high-income welfare state does not | have a great live, but they are still comforted by the fact | that they are not in danger of dying of starvation. | seydor wrote: | i m not really seeing it. | | The old money (journalists of mainstream newspapers) can leave | and take all the audiences with them. Their audience is there | for the narrative and ideology, not because they are fond of | Twitter. | | Twitter does not have a "native" audience, because it claims to | be a platform. If they engaged deeper with content producers | (like substack does) they might have. It's a solely megaphone, | hence useless without a voice behind them. | | Old money reigns supreme because the "new" voices are not | independent. They go on twitter so they can graduate to | mainstream media (or to onlyfans) | wobbly_bush wrote: | > Old money reigns supreme because the "new" voices are not | independent | | Are you implying there are no legitimate discussions between | non-checkmarked users today on Twitter? That there is only a | leader(check-marked users) and follower dynamic? | seydor wrote: | not talking about checkmarks | | twitter is propped up by the mainstream media, not the | other way around. if mainstream journalists leave, twitter | will be tumblr. for new twitterers, twitter is not a | platform to stay on, but a bridge to graduate to somwhere | else or build your audience and move it elsewhere (a book, | podcast, youtube, articles in mainstream newspapers etc). | | For example, one can say that Joe rogan used to have a | 'home' on youtube, now on spotify. Who has a permanent home | on twitter? | madeofpalk wrote: | I think this would do the complete opposite. Create two tiers | of of users: Lords with the money to spend $8/month on getting | a blue tick next to their name, and the peasants who don't | cough up. | | I can't wait to be disregarded just as a spam bot because I | thought it's an embarrassing waste of money. | zzleeper wrote: | Can't it actually be the opposite? Like, sure I could pay | $8/no (a coffee plus croissant) but it signals that I care so | much about being heard on twitter that I'm willing to PAY for | it... Only losers do so, so blue checkmarks a are that. | madeofpalk wrote: | I think it would do both tbh. | [deleted] | LastTrain wrote: | Except famous people now get a verified tag, rendering most of | what you said moot. This is a bad idea, it will fail, and Musk | will make like he never said it. If you don't think so, just | imagine yourself paying Facebook for a checkmark and see if | that feels right. | paxys wrote: | "This new thing is surely all about me" - tech billionaires | uoaei wrote: | More mental gymnastics... I'm not even sure what point is being | made by this move, other than devaluing the blue check to the | point of meaninglessness. It's not even "utilitarian": if | leveling the playing field was Musk's interest, he would have | eliminated the blue check altogether. | | There is no mechanism for anti-impersonation if all it takes to | get a blue check is payment. Bot farms can also pay money for | blue checks... | muststopmyths wrote: | mental gymnastics is being too kind. You've summarized quite | succinctly the effect of this change. | | I guess I don't get this 5-D chess the masters of the | universe are playing. From my plebian plane it looks like a | monkey flinging poop at a wall. | ericd wrote: | It substantially changes the economics of bots - cheap for a | person, expensive for a person running 10,000 bots that want | to appear legitimate. | uoaei wrote: | So you've limited the success of bot farms only to the set | of state actors. Yay, such a great improvement... | ericd wrote: | Well yeah, that actually is. Most spammers aren't | government backed. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | Expensive for a _person_ running 10,000 bots, irrelevant to | a hostile nation doing the same. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Almost everything is irrelevant to a hostile nation | state, because by its very nature it can outspend your | security if it cares badly enough. In the immortal words | of James Mickens[0], "If your adversary is the Mossad, | YOU'RE GONNA DIE AND THERE'S NOTHING THAT YOU CAN DO | ABOUT IT." | | Raising the costs has a general effect of cutting out | people who do not care enough to pay - be it individuals, | companies, or governments. | | ---- | | [0] - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mick | ens.pdf | comboy wrote: | I think the expensive part comes mostly from the part that | it is hard to make anonymous payment. Sending money is kind | of a verification (unless dogecoin is accepted ;) ). | | I still have no clue why bots would care to have it though, | since there is obviously a very high percentage of people | who don't. | paulpauper wrote: | >Bots get taxed. | | Crypto scammers make so much that paying $8 is pocket change if | it means having scam tweets be more visible. | pavlov wrote: | It's fascinating to glimpse these endless mental contortions | about the immense significance of tweaks to a social media | profile flag. I don't think anyone cares except those same | billionaires/VCs and journalists who both write this drivel | (one of the links is on a16zcrypto.com which I guess is the | ideological enemy base of "establishment journos"). Will anyone | else be left on Twitter when their private war is done? | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _It's fascinating to glimpse these endless mental | contortions about the immense significance of tweaks to a | social media profile flag. I don't think anyone cares except | those same billionaires /VCs and journalists (...)_ | | Would you say the same about GitHub stars? There's no end of | people obsessing about those, completely oblivious to the | fact that they're first and foremost _bookmarks_ , and do not | confer any particular sentiment for a starred repository. And | yet, they're a popularity contest. | | Journalists and VCs care about this because enough _users_ | care about this that it can be used to print money. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | Weird, I've never heard of people obsessing over GitHub | stars. I guess if you're not actively contributing to open | source projects, it's not something you care about. | TeMPOraL wrote: | See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33309969 for a | recent thread on this. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | You're seeing it more on HN because there's a huge (IMO | growing) overlap between HN commenters and Twitter users. The | comments on Big Tech articles look identical to entire slices | of Twitter. Some of the talking heads on HN who comment a lot | also have moderately large Twitter followings. | | Despite being in tech and working adjacent to Big Tech, in my | circles only HN and Twitter users are this up in arms about | Twitter. They seem to be more concerned about this than even | friends of mine who work at Twitter (who are more peeved by | the current instability in the company than anything going on | with the product.) | | It's fun popcorn on HN right now but if this continues it'll | get pretty tiring IMO. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | > Everyone who needs one can pay for a blue check. | | At $8/month, that's patently not true. Why should verification | be anything other than a pay-once deal, if it has to be paid | for at all? | meragrin_ wrote: | > At $8/month, that's patently not true. | | Who needs one that cannot afford $8/month? Does anyone really | need it? | | > Why should verification be anything other than a pay-once | deal, if it has to be paid for at all? | | It is not just verification though. Verification is just part | of the subscription. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | > Who needs one that cannot afford $8/month? Does anyone | really need it? | | A lot of freelance writers, in my experience. | | > It is not just verification though. Verification is just | part of the subscription. | | That's a fair point, but why not make verification free (or | a one-off payment) and remove it from the subscription | feature package? | lupire wrote: | What happens if you freelance write without a blue check? | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | A bad actor can impersonate you and damage your | reputation, commit scams in your name, etc. | [deleted] | croes wrote: | >Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a | utilitarian one | | So it becomes worthless to the ones who want it as a status | symbol. Why pay if you aren't something special afterwards? | weinzierl wrote: | It's more like the peasants will get a useless blue checkmark | and the Lords will get a tag, which eventually will have the | same meaning as the checkmark today. Everything stays the same | but everyone pays. | | _" There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone | who is a public figure, which is already the case for | politicians"_ | | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587527711228149765?s=46... | sph wrote: | lmao such a populist move then. Make it sound like what was | before a privilege for the few now is in reach for the | working man, but actually there is now another type of | privilege that it is unreachable unless you're a Very | Important Person. | | All the Musk fans, happy to see their messiah disrupt an | institution, played like an absolute fiddle. This is | hilarious. | | The king is dead, long live the king! | nrb wrote: | > Very Important Person | | Or just a person likely to be impersonated for various | scams or other social attacks? How does anyone see a blue | check as anything other than that? | skybrian wrote: | I expect it will still be a free-to-play game, with some | upsells for whales. Gotta keep follower counts up. | lamontcg wrote: | > It elicits shrieks because it's more about leveling the | playing field than making money. | | If 1% of twitter accounts pay then that is $400M/yr which is a | decent chunk of revenue for twitter. It is absolutely about | making money. | | All the government and official accounts along with CEOs, | actors and other public personas will be almost forced to pay | up. The existing blue check marks who don't pay up will | probably be made up for 10x by wannabe youtube personalities | that pay for it. | | The "blue check establishment journos" are also almost all | upper middle class liberals, there's not much of a morality | story here other than PMCs and capitalists having a squabble. | res0nat0r wrote: | Some better takes on this from what I've seen: | | https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1587381512500125699 | | > If one in five current blue ticks paid $20 a month that would | raise just under $15 million a year for Twitter...Twitter's | current revenues (mostly from ads) are $5 billion a year. | Musk's apparent plan would generate about 30 hours' worth of | annual revenue. | | https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1587509202401927168 | | > Absolutely _no one_ should pay $8 or $20 a month to support | Elton Murk 's latest scam. Asking low-income Twitter users to | pay $92 a year so their tweets don't get hidden and | deprioritized alongside bots is not giving "power to the | people." | reaperducer wrote: | _If one in five current blue ticks paid $20 a month that | would raise just under $15 million a year for Twitter_ | | Until suddenly there are yellow checkmarks available for | $100/month, and red checkmarks available for $500/month, and | enterprise-only green checkmarks for $5,000/month. | memish wrote: | "It elicits shrieks because it's more about leveling the | playing field than making money." | whoknew1122 wrote: | Twitter is currently free. | | This proposed subscription prioritizes content based on who | can/decides to pay $8 a month. | | How exactly is this leveling the playing field? | Dylan16807 wrote: | It levels a few people and covers the rest of the field | with potholes. | LastTrain wrote: | You already said that. Leveling the playfield would be | having no distinguishing marks at all. | mscarborough wrote: | Reposting your comment doesn't make it any more true. | rideontime wrote: | How does adding a new subscription feature and changing | verification checkmarks to "secondary tags" level the | playing field? | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587527711228149765 | bdougherty wrote: | Because previously you had to be blessed to get a | bluecheck, now you just have to pay. Way more people have | the means to pay than were blessed. | res0nat0r wrote: | The 2nd comment above pretty much debunks that IMO. If | you're paying money and given more visibility to your | comments vs. non-paying users, this does the exact | opposite. | type-r wrote: | not that i think this is some brilliant revenue strategy but | it does not strike me as a good take to automatically assume | that the current blue check mark base is a strict superset of | who will pay $8/month | mmahemoff wrote: | What percentage of "current" blue ticks convert is not | material since the TAM is about to become every Twitter user. | | And the offering is not just about verification, but other | Blue features. Personally I have no interest in a blue check, | but I'd happily pay $8/month to remove ads (unfortunately | only half the ads will be removed in this iteration). | paganel wrote: | > Asking low-income Twitter users to | | I'm curious how many low-income Twitter users now have a | blue-check. | clouddrover wrote: | > _A lot of people aren 't groking what this means_ | | There is no mystery here. It went like this: | | 1. Musk signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter. | | 2. And then he got cold feet when he decided he didn't like the | deal he made and he spent six months desperately trying to not | buy Twitter. | | 3. And then he finally understood that he would lose the court | case and that he had to live up to the contract and so he | bought Twitter at the originally agreed price. | | 4. And now Musk wants Twitter users to pay for his poor | business decision and fund him out of his debt. | lupire wrote: | What's missing is how capricious monetization ideas get us | from 4 to solvency. | lossolo wrote: | When Twitter Elite? Only for 100$ a month your replies will have | priority over Twitter Blue users and then Twitter Whale - contact | us for pricing, you will have priority over Twitter Elite users, | then me and my friends millionaires can all buy Twitter Whale and | Elite, before you get to see replies from a common person (the | ones that can't pay) you will already lose your attention anyway, | so we the wealthy will shape the reality. | [deleted] | MKais wrote: | If I'm not mistaken, a few years ago, the basic social network | (facebook & Co) was valuated on this ad basis: one user = $10. | | The same logic for twitter gives $45B/400M users = ~$110/user. | | 99% of those users are useless but 1% are not. | | In my view, Twitter is a propaganda machine with its 1% | influencers/journalists/prophets that overflow world media and | their billions of viewers/consumers/voters. | rongopo wrote: | I stopped twitter during my long covid, and now I do not miss it. | I just enter to post updates and keep some followers. I lost | sense of why more could be needed! | eric_b wrote: | I guess I'll go on record and say I think this is a great idea. | There's too many journalists who just spew hot takes all day - at | least make them pay for the privilege | ausbah wrote: | one of the main touted draws of twitter is it's suppose to be | the "public square of the internet". you not liking what | someone posts shouldn't really curtail that (minus them being a | private company and what not) | thorum wrote: | Blue checkmarks are not just about verification and extra | features. They're a status symbol. They mean you are cool and | notable enough to deserve one according the shadowy and | mysterious Twitter checkmark committee. If they become a | commodity that anyone with a little money can buy, they lose a | big part of their appeal to the average person. | apeace wrote: | I initially thought this too, but then I remembered: a lot of | people on social media care very much about how many followers | they get, how many likes they get, etc. Under the new plan, you | will get priority in replies, mentions, and search. I think | that will have a lot of value for people addicted to likes. | | The checkmarks won't be a status symbol anymore, but the masses | will want their tweets prioritized. | madeofpalk wrote: | At the moment I think it's kind of embarrassing to see | someone edit a tweet, because it means they've been paying | for Twitter Blue. | [deleted] | BurningFrog wrote: | This is day 5 of the Elon/Sink era. | | I expect more changes are ahead that might address these | concerns. | rmsaksida wrote: | It depends. There are so many terrible posters with blue | checkmarks that I almost consider it a red flag. Most of my | favorite twitter profiles are unverified. | stainablesteel wrote: | > If they become a commodity that anyone with a little money | can buy, they lose a big part of their appeal to the average | person. | | this is basically how it operated before, except with political | bias | hackinthebochs wrote: | >they lose a big part of their appeal to the average person. | | However, there is a lag time between when the status-conferring | benefits end and the semantics of the blue check mark in the | minds of users catches up. They can potentially make a lot of | money in that lag time and bootstrap a new valuable semantics | around the verified label. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | No average person cares about having a blue-tick; you have to | several standard deviations away from the mean to care already. | baby wrote: | I mean so is the Github "pro" badge. You don't need it if all | you're using are free features. And yet a lot of people buy it | to showcase support or have that "cool" badge. If the same | happens for twitter then good for them no? They get more | funding to develop cool shit. | Dma54rhs wrote: | Do people really do that on github? Im curious where you have | noticed it or similar behaviour. I know the GitHub stars | being a status symbol for dinner but never noticed badge | idea. | watwut wrote: | Yeah, but the way this played out and was promoted, it wont | say "cool". The badge being cool requires certain kind of PR | and this does not seem to me to be it. In github case, pro | badge means you support resource many many developers user | for free and is super useful. In case of twitter, it is | unclear what it means, really. That you want to yell louder I | guess? | baby wrote: | That's the bet. I'm willing to bet that they'll make good money | from it, which is all that matters from twitter's pov. | criddell wrote: | > They're a status symbol. They mean you are cool and notable | | Is that what _you_ think when you see a blue check? | koonsolo wrote: | Maybe they lose the appeal as you say. But on the other hand, | maybe everyone now wants to avoid not having it. | keneda7 wrote: | You hit the nail on the head in your post. The mysterious | Twitter checkmark committee that got to gatekeep who could be | in their group. Then people (probably the committee itself) | started pushing the idea that blue check marks are more | reliable and trustworthy. | | I am not okay with a random group of people being able to | decide whether or not someone is trustworthy. I prefer the | checkmark to mean this person pays x dollars versus this person | has been deemed worthy of a secret group of people at a company | that has massive bias issues. | matai_kolila wrote: | Trustworthiness has never been part of the equation, what the | heck are you talking about??? | seydor wrote: | i actually think checkmarks was twitter's great strength. it | made them look like a medium with ideology and | editorialization, which attracted a lot of ideologically | committed people. Twitter used the checkmark to gatekeep | twitterers and as a weapon. they ridiculously "unverified" | people (as if those people lost their identity or sth). It | was all about signaling. Now it's just something you can buy | throwaway04923 wrote: | They still are a strength, if you search for a public | person by name the blue checkmark still works very well. | But if it's commodity where scammers can buy them then the | strength is gone. | moistly wrote: | It's not a trust mark, it's an authentication mark: this | person is who they say they are. It _really is_ Stephen King. | Your grandmother doesn't need an authentication mark because | you can call her up and ask "Hey, granny, did you really | tweet that?" Nothing to do with actual trust, other than that | the famous name really is famous name. | bitcharmer wrote: | > They mean you are cool and notable enough to deserve one | according the shadowy and mysterious Twitter checkmark | committee | | That's the exact problem with the blue checkmarks. I've seen | plenty of complete loons with that mark on Twitter spewing | utter racist or bigoted garbage. At least now the criteria of | receiving the blue mark of coolness are getting clear and the | same for everyone. | minimaxir wrote: | The price 100% was $20/mo as previously reported by journalists | until Twitter dunked on it, and Elon's interpretation of the | backlash is "the price is too high" and not "any price makes no | sense at all." | | This pricing clarification is most likely due to Stephen King's | complaint: | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144 | | > We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely | on advertisers. How about $8? | jjfoooo6 wrote: | Elon completely miss the point in this exchange, which is that | Twitter needs people like Stephen King far more than people | like Stephen King need Twitter. Why should Stephen King care | about how Twitter pays it's bills? | | The entire point of the blue check is that Twitter has an | impersonation problem, what happens when some fraction of users | find it worth paying $8 to impersonate a celebrity? | memish wrote: | Why does any price make no sense? | | "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." | | Though to truly resolve this, they need 0 ads, not 50% fewer. | mikkergp wrote: | I think it's bimodal. Either Twitter is worth like 100$+ per | month if you're a journalist/brand, or it's less than 0, and | in Stephen King's case he's correct that Twitter should | probably be paying him. | geodel wrote: | Yeah, I guess, he should disappear right now and negotiate | a deal before coming back to Twitter. | mikkergp wrote: | It would be fun to try and mediate the discussions to try | and convince which of the big ego'd | celebrities/journalists/politicians are of value to | twitter and twitter should pay, vs which are a sink and | they should pay twitter. Hey monetezation plan! I would | pay good money to watch that reality TV show. | [deleted] | bigmattystyles wrote: | Plus it doesn't mean they won't also sell your data to third | parties - there's more to your digital presence than just | selling you ads. | bcrosby95 wrote: | "Elon, what made you decide on $8?" | | "I was going to charge $20, but then Stephen King told me it | was too much." | carbine wrote: | or they were anchoring the price at $20 so $8 feels like a | deal. not rocket science. :P | enumjorge wrote: | You joke, but after reading some texts from Musk and his | social circle [1], I find it plausible that that is how some | of these business decisions get made. | | [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/el | on-... | IshKebab wrote: | Doesn't seem like too bad a method to me. Apart from in | situations where you have a _ton_ of data (e.g. Amazon) | most product prices are pulled out of someone 's arse | anyway. | robryan wrote: | This is probably fine though, it is the Elon way of doing | business. Make fast decisions and try and whole heap of | things. He then gets criticised for not delivering on the | majority of them but still comes out ahead of orgs that | take 6 months to make the decision in the first place. | mkoubaa wrote: | If any number is going to be shit on may as well pick one | that has a fun story | pclmulqdq wrote: | My gut instinct is that the right price for verification is | something like $1000 as a one-time fee. Lots of people who are | active Twitter users will find that fee useful at some point in | their life (as a business marketing expense), and Twitter will | likely extract a lot more from them by charging $1000 once | rather than $8/month. | HWR_14 wrote: | I cannot ever imagine spending $1000 for a blue check mark on | Twitter. | rchaud wrote: | Influencers and hustlebros will pay that, celebrities won't. | | If the celebrities leave, Twitter dies. | yamtaddle wrote: | Exactly. Who's hurt more if it's hard to tell who the real | celebrities are on Twitter? Whose press is worse when a | celebrity is impersonated by some asshole on Twitter-- | Twitter's, or the celebrity's? Maybe initially the | celebrity, but I'm gonna say it's Twitter in the medium- | term. Who's gonna be hurt by "Twitter has an | impersonation/fraud problem" headlines? | | Whatever else the blue checks are, they're also a solution | to a problem _for Twitter_ , and those blue-checks and | their activity are a huge part of why everyone else engages | with the platform. If they make people pay, they better | hope the adoption rate is incredibly high _among existing | blue checks_ (who cares about the unknowns who pony up for | it, in addition) or they 're gonna be in for a bad time. | ncallaway wrote: | I think it should just be 3x the cost of their verification | process, and something that disappears and needs to be re- | done if you edit your name/bio/handle. | UncleMeat wrote: | Imagine making pricing decisions for a 40 billion dollar | business on a fucking whim based on feedback from a famous | author. I guess this is in character, given that Musk likes to | price things with meme numbers already. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | I don't think he did do that. Stephen King made it clear he | wouldn't pay any price on principle. | memish wrote: | Imagine thinking he made the decision based on that. | yamtaddle wrote: | I guess it _is_ possible he floated the $20 knowing someone | very-famous would object and he could counter--either | misreading the room badly, or else as a deliberate insult-- | with $8, which was what he wanted all along. | | 5d chess and all that. | | Or he's impulsive and tweets dumb shit basically all the | time. It might just be that. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Perhaps he actually did - I think in part he's just playing | it straight as an outsider, openly talking about the | emperor being naked. That is, a lot of the serious business | is just bullshit LARP people do, and if Musk can openly | mock it _and_ make money on the meme value of it all? That | 's a well-earned entertainer salary. | UncleMeat wrote: | He's owned Twitter for a few days. He threw out $20 and | then adjusted it down to $8, seemingly based on feedback. | Did he already know that $8 was the appropriate amount? Was | there already some internal analysis done that he is just | piggy-backing on? It certainly _seems_ like Musk is making | big changes literally moments after arriving on scene. | carbine wrote: | yes great point, without a doubt he put together $44B and | never once thought about what he would do once he | acquired it. | phpisthebest wrote: | if you only proof the price was $20 is because "journalists" | reported it as so then I question your ability to critical | think and judge facts because "journalists" report false things | every day all day | | there is little to no evidence it was ever really $20, and even | less evidence that Elon's mind was changed by Stephen King of | all people... Who care what Stephen King thinks? | | More likely it was always going to be $8 | mikkergp wrote: | It's such... odd behavior. For sure Stephen King who has a net | worth of $500 million dollars does not mean "the price is too | high". | | If Elon is successful, even I will read the business school | case study on it, because it flies in the face of everything I | understand about complex systems and... well just about | everything. The only way this works is if Elon's internal | processes are way different from his public persona. | memish wrote: | For King and many other blue checks it's a status symbol. A | way for the Lord to distinguish himself from the peasants. | | King (aptly named) would be happier if it was a Veblen good | that cost $100,000/mo, which he could afford, but the | peasants can't. | | Elon is mocking King and his status symbol by saying "fine, | how about $8?", which from the King's perspective, is worse | than $20 because even more peasants will have it. The Blue | Check is easier to get than a Netflix subscription. | ssully wrote: | I don't think you could have misread this interaction more | than you already have. | memish wrote: | I can see how you think that if you're not familiar with | how blue checks are awarded and what they mean to the | nobility class of Twitter. | ssully wrote: | I am very aware of that. | | I think you're not familiar with a King as a person or an | author based on your comment. | | Finally, you thinking Musk was mocking is also wrong. He | was using Kings viral tweet as a jump off point for the | tweet this HN post is based off of. | rodgerd wrote: | "The nobility class". | | What an absolute clownish take. | Fomite wrote: | But very possibly the type of clownish take Musk is | trying to monitize by charging for access to it. | yamtaddle wrote: | I think you're misreading how much an elderly ultra- | famous and quite rich author gives a shit about his | "status" on some stupid website like Twitter. | | I think he was insulted at the idea of having to pay | anything to be verified on the platform, when both his | presence and his being verified are _helpful_ to twitter | and make twitter money, even if they do also drive some | book sales for him. I took it as his saying that he 'd | respond to such an insult (being asked to pay) by simply | leaving, because Twitter and whatever little extra money | it's making him don't really matter much to him. | | I doubt he's alone in that thinking. Though sure, some | celebs, most or all brands ( _that 's_ who they should be | soaking with monthly charges), and the media will stick | around until/unless the platform enters clear decline and | a viable alternative emerges. | freejazz wrote: | Yeesh, what is with the Twitter/Musk fanboy crowd and | journalists and blue checks. It's such an unhinged and | nonsensical hatred. Reeks of being jealous. | [deleted] | tcmart14 wrote: | I don't think its that. I think it is literal to the effect | of, twitter wouldn't have such a huge crowd to serve ads to | without people like King who have tons of followers coming | to the platform to get updates. An example, I don't have a | twitter account, but I will surf Hector Martin's twitter | for updates on Asahi Linux development. If it wasn't for | Hector Martin's content, twitter would never be requested | by my browser. | | So it is essentially, charge the people who bring the users | to twitter. | amadeuspagel wrote: | But Hector Martin doesn't have a bluecheck: | https://twitter.com/marcan42 | criddell wrote: | King responds saying Twitter should be paying him. I think | that makes a lot of sense. | memish wrote: | It will be both. Pay to verify, get paid for creating | content. | | "This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward | content creators" | | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587505731611262976 | schleck8 wrote: | What kind of content is being created on Twitter that | warrants being paid? Reddit works flawlessly without that | in longer form | MarcelOlsz wrote: | Reddit the same site that deletes tons of comments and | bans subreddits? | lupire wrote: | Flawless has never been a word to describe Reddit. | mikkergp wrote: | agreed, it seems like Twitter is fundamentally about | broadcasting content made somewhere else, not making | content. | rodgerd wrote: | Points of view that Elon likes, I imagine. Especially | ones that can't get revenue elsewhere for peddling pro- | virus points of view, for example. | amadeuspagel wrote: | Completely wrongheaded. If anything, twitter should be | paying anonymous users. Bluechecks are the ones who use | twitter to build their personal brand, sell books, etc.. | freejazz wrote: | Do you not know who Steven King is? It's certainly easier | to google him than to come up with a take like this in | response. | fundad wrote: | I would love to pay to donate content to the site acquired by | a guy to promote his other properties. | oneoff786 wrote: | He's saying the price is bullshit, not that he can't afford | it. To him, it offers basically no value. While him being on | Twitter does offer Twitter value. | | He's probably right, although it doesn't generalize to most | celebrities who do have a vested interest in paying to | promote themselves. | [deleted] | conductr wrote: | You don't think $8-20/month of book sales are generated by | King's twitter presence? | lamontcg wrote: | He can still tweet without a blue checkmark and people | will still know who he is. | mikkergp wrote: | Correct, which is odd that Elon responded to him, "How | about 8?" | smackeyacky wrote: | I might be wrong but I read that as a veiled insult. i.e. | "Are you such a povvo that you can't afford $20?" | mikkergp wrote: | If it is an insult it seems very defensive, and feels | like he gave Stephen King the upper hand. | linuxftw wrote: | Twitter offers him value, or he wouldn't be on it. | Personally, I think they could charge $50/mo and most blue | checks would pay it. | | I think Elon has the right idea, you gotta dip their toes | in the water, then jack up the price later. | ssully wrote: | Of course it offers him value, but Stephen King being on | the platform is more valuable to Twitter than it is for | King. | bombcar wrote: | I wonder if that's actually true - if it is, King should | go make his own Twitter-like thing. | brookst wrote: | I don't think it works that way? | | When Oprah is seen dining at a restaurant, the restaurant | gets more value from the PR than Oprah gets from the | meal. That does not lead to the conclusion that she | should go open a restaurant. | ssully wrote: | I think King is better served by continuing to write and | live his life. | yamtaddle wrote: | Some blue checks need Twitter (mid-level youtubers, for | instance). Some don't (Stephen King, for instance). In either | case, Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a | large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage | with Twitter. | | I can see someone like Stephen King being annoyed at having | to pay anything when his presence is probably helping Twitter | quite a bit to begin with. | TigeriusKirk wrote: | > Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a | large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage | with Twitter. | | That may have been true at one time, but I'm not so sure it | is any more. | yamtaddle wrote: | I'm struggling to understand how that would _not_ be | true. Nobody follows a Twitter link to see what Joe Blow | posted about _anything_. They follow them to see what | someone they 've heard of posted. People create accounts | to follow blue checks, or to try to network with them. I | get that there are several market segments for Twitter | but ~all of them are pretty dependent on blue checks to | drive eyeballs to the site and to keep people coming | back, as far as I can tell. If people just want a group | chat with other nobodies, Whatsapp exists. | | Thing is, the "blue checks" aren't all Stephen King level | famous. If you're doing much notable at all, and using | the platform, you've probably got a blue check. I do not, | for the record--I'm not sure I even have an account?--but | I see an awful lot of them on _fairly niche_ but | interesting & active personal accounts. Take them out | and the best content goes back to being "I'm a Twitter | Shitter!" kinds of stuff, like in the very early days-- | and the novelty for that is long gone. | | If these posters stay but let their blue checks lapse, we | go back to having an impersonation problem, which is | mostly a problem _for Twitter_ , which they may want to | solve. Perhaps for accounts that are likely to be | impersonated they could introduce some kind of free | verification system.... | lupire wrote: | Stephen King needs a blue check because Twitter is terrible | at deleting imposter accounts. | yamtaddle wrote: | Why does he care? Seems like that's worse for Twitter | than it is for him. | | [EDIT] My point is, from King's perspective, this likely | looks like "you're here and making $X over what you would | if you just relied on your fans to repost all your stuff | on here for you, we're making $Y more than we otherwise | would because you're here, plus we've given you this | blue-check thing to solve a problem _we have_ , but now | $Y isn't enough and we're going to make you pay money to | keep participating in this program that exists to solve a | problem for _us_. " | | You can see how, unless $X is pretty big, someone who's | already rich might say, "well fine, fuck you too" over | such a thing. | [deleted] | Waterluvian wrote: | One of the things I admire about Elon (which is saying a | lot...) is that for whatever reason, he's ready to bet the | farm over and over. Whether he's some genius tactician or an | impulsive moron, he just bought Twitter and is poised to | drastically alter it. | | "flies in the face of everything I understand about complex | systems" indeed! | | Forgive me for this analogy but it's in the news: Imagine if | NATO just said one day, "you know what, !@#$ it. We're done | managing this complex system. Let's assume Russia doesn't | have or won't use nukes and change our entire doctrine | overnight. Get ready to deploy everything." | | There's a real possibility Elon buys Twitter for billions and | runs it straight into the ground because he does not | understand complex systems. Or maybe he gambles and is lucky. | Or maybe he really does _get it_ and this is all in some | absolutely bizarre way, calculated. | dieortin wrote: | I really don't want to live in a world in which so much | depends on impulsive individuals. Your example sounds like | a nightmare. That's no way to make decisions. | BurningFrog wrote: | Sure, but impulses among individuals like Putin, Biden | and Xi Jinping have _much_ bigger impact. | reverius42 wrote: | And that's why it's so important for world leaders to not | act (or appear to act) impulsively! You might say the | same is true for business leaders. | Waterluvian wrote: | Yeah. It does sound like a nightmare. And I'm glad that, | for now at least, those who get to make the decisions are | not as impulsive as countless people are online about the | matter. | | And when it comes to a $44 billon purchase, it sounds | like a nightmare to affect it so impulsively. | | At least, unlike the nuclear fallout, it's not my money, | I guess. | dboreham wrote: | But that's the world we all live in, and have for | thousands of years. | bombcar wrote: | If you read the stories of many "successful" CEOs (I'm | thinking Jobs here, but there are others) the decisions | they'd make often would come out as quite impulsive. | | If you dig significantly you might find that they're not | as impulsive as they seem, that the person was actually | considering many aspects but playing their cards close | until cut-off time. | mikkergp wrote: | This is true, and so far Elon is doing exactly the thing | everyone says you can't do with a social network. If he | succeeds, it will completely change the space. Also | interesting change of strategy during an economic | downturn. | | But I do think one difference at least from where I'm | sitting, is usually the response is, that's crazy, but if | it works you'll be rich! | | I'm not even really clear on what the "if it works" is in | this situation, I guess if he proves that people are | willing to pay $8 per month for a social network? | mikkergp wrote: | Speaking of impulsive, I didn't realize he fired the top | exists for-cause blowing up their golden parachutes: | | https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-fired- | twi... | Waterluvian wrote: | That'll be a fun half-decade of lawsuits... | mikkergp wrote: | One thing he seems to have estimated is the motivations | of other wealthy folk he tries to take (or deny) money | from. | thombat wrote: | Matt Levine has an interesting take on this [0], | basically that nothing in that Musk claims of their | behaviour meets the specification of "cause" in their | employment contracts, and further that the golden | parachutes are a good thing in that they prevent the | C-suite from being focused on their continuing salary: | | "The basic problem with Musk's efforts to walk away from | these severance agreements -- beyond the lack of actual | arguments -- is that if he can stiff these executives | then no golden parachute is binding. The point of a | golden parachute is that a CEO with a golden parachute | will sell his company to a buyer whom he doesn't like, if | that's what is best for shareholders. If the buyer can | stiff the CEO on the parachute payments because they | don't like each other, then no buyer will ever pay | severance, and no CEO will ever trust it." | | [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20221031165639/https://ww | w.bloom... | mikkergp wrote: | "And then Elon Musk showed up for his first day of work | as Twitter's chief executive officer -- technically its | Chief Twit -- and said "hey, do you have any other | contracts I could violate?" | | Oh, this is going to be a fun read. | | In response to your quote, I guess he did it as revenge | for making him go through with it. | oska wrote: | No, I definitely won't forgive you your 'analogy', because | it's sneaking in a highly irresponsible argument for | military escalation into a completely unrelated discussion. | UncleMeat wrote: | I don't quite think it is luck - but a weird second thing. | | Musk has a reality distortion field. I think he is a | bloviating jerk but I know a lot of really really smart and | dedicated engineers in software and in more traditional | fields like mech-e and aerospace who would rather work for | Musk than any other person and are willing to take pay cuts | to work for him. This means he really can surround himself | with very skilled people who can distill his "fuck it, we | are doing FOO" commands into real plans. | | What this tells me is not that Musk is a visionary but that | a lot of shitty visions are nevertheless achievable if | you've got enough smart people around you. | [deleted] | carbine wrote: | this is such a cynical take | pkaye wrote: | So why is he able to get smart people around him? Its not | like he pays them a lot or offer a good work/life balance | in their job. | robryan wrote: | Sells them on the mission. Things like a colony on Mars | and full self driving are pretty compelling goals for | some people. | renewiltord wrote: | Elon offers people a chance to operate at a true 100% on | a thing that matters. Next to that, work-life balance | pales. And comp? Comp follows company glory. Tesla | engineers are rich, man. | BurningFrog wrote: | I don't understand Elon either, but I'm _certain_ that he | 's not an impulsive moron who doesn't understand complex | system, or that he's financing all this with his dad's | emerald mine money. | | For me, there is enough track record to prove he has some | very unique business skills, and often succeeds by doing | things that conventionally looks crazy. | | That said, Elon's Twitter may well be a failure regardless. | Pretty sure it won't be boring though :) | mikkergp wrote: | Def. won't be boring. Really we only get to see probably | less than half of what he's planning. If the other half | is more strategic, then he'll do fine, if the other half | mirrors his public image, then I can't see it working. | fluidcruft wrote: | I'm getting a chuckle thinking about Elon as ThePirateBay and | Stephen King as the MPAA. | croes wrote: | Since when does ThePirateBay demand a fee and the MPAA says | it's too high? | fluidcruft wrote: | Exactly. That's why its so ridiculous. | CodeWriter23 wrote: | I don't think the price is what bugs him so much as the | newly-diminished elite status of the blue check. | muttantt wrote: | No, he just anchored everyone at $20 so that $8 comes across as | affordable. Business 101. | woodruffw wrote: | I've had Twitter Blue lite for years: I use an adblocker, and I | manually block every single advertisement that sneaks through by | blocking the advertise's entire Twitter account. The end result | is that my feed is nearly entirely organic, followed content. | | Why would I pay $8/month for a materially worse experience? | nothatscool wrote: | I think changing the verification badge into something actually | useful instead of a status symbol is a good thing. If there is a | great exodus of Twitter influencers and it starts to affect | traffic, then twitter can just add some kind of notability mark | to high profile accounts. | | Edit: They already plan to add a tag for public figures. | bentt wrote: | This is interesting. I have increasingly looked at Twitter as a | business tool. This will push me further in that direction. It | will make less sense to just hop on and drop hot takes without | any purpose. I think I like it. | | That said, this doesn't really say "Global Town Hall". | Barrin92 wrote: | yup. If you're going down the route of twitter as a | civilizational platform starting to sell premium citizenship | rather than the original "verify every real human being" | certainly seems odd. | rongopo wrote: | Income from those that post, from those than read, and from | adverts? This is a scam, comparable or superior than academic | editorials. I predict it will last less than 5 years. | sneak wrote: | I hope this means I can use a disposable prepaid card and not | give a phone number during signup. | | They were using phone numbers for antispam; hopefully $8 will | serve the same purpose. | | Twitter's had employees that sold user PII to murderous foreign | governments. It is not safe to have PII associated with a | sufficiently controversial Twitter account. Maybe they can accept | crypto payments for this during signup. | anon115 wrote: | mass decision design discussion for a big business and design | decision. | wnevets wrote: | Twitter is gonna crash and burn way sooner than I though. | throwingrocks wrote: | Agreed! I don't know anything about business, but the company | will surely implode in the coming days. It's as if Musk and co. | put zero though into this. | memish wrote: | That's what people said about Tesla. | LightG wrote: | Except ... they do. Often. | wnevets wrote: | I don't know which people you're referring to or why you are | comparing a company that the Americans tax payers propped up | for years to a social media website like Twitter. | notatoad wrote: | I'm confused. Does $8 get you a blue check or no? | | If it does, $8/mo for a blue check and reply priority seems like | a pretty good deal for all those people impersonating Elon musk | to run crypto scams | franciscop wrote: | I believe it's implicit $8 for the blue check verification | process, and if successful you get the blue check. | AtNightWeCode wrote: | I have zero doubt that EM will bring Twitter to a better place. I | mean, this is the platform where basic image upload was broken | for 10+ years. How can that not be the top task in the backlog? I | can answer that right away. Tech people focus on tech. | | I think cost might be a problem with Blue. I mean, I collect | domain names for fun. I don't think Twitter can provide the right | tools to guard against false blue account claims. | throwaway04923 wrote: | What is this going to solve? Blue checkmarks was intended to find | the real public person instead of thousand scammers. If it now | means that you have paid for account, then what is the point? | | This is not going to help their finances either. Someone [1] did | a calculation: | | "If one in five current blue ticks paid $20 a month that would | raise just under $15 million a year for Twitter... Twitter's | current revenues (mostly from ads) are $5 billion a year. Musk's | apparent plan would generate about 30 hours' worth of annual | revenue." | | https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1587381512500125699 | bambax wrote: | Matt Levine: | | > _Musk wants to start charging people to have a little blue | check mark next to their names on Twitter. I wrote yesterday | about reports that the price will be $19.99 per month, but that | seems not to be a final decision, and other numbers have been | suggested. Also last night Musk was personally negotiating the | price with Stephen King. "$20 a month to keep my blue check?" | tweeted King. "[No], they should pay me. If that gets instituted, | I'm gone like Enron." Musk replied: "We need to pay the bills | somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about | $8?" I absolutely love that, in between his busy schedule of | reading printouts of 50 pages of code per Twitter employee to | decide who to fire, Musk is personally going to negotiate | commercial terms with each of Twitter's hundreds of thousands of | verified users. I have a blue check, I'm gonna tweet "I'll pay | $7.69" and see what he says._ | bombcar wrote: | King made a comment about price, and Musk made a (relatively) | good reply - by asking "How about $8?" he's framed it as a | value proposition and now you have to either say "nothing, | Twitter is worthless" or you have to come back with a dollar | amount. It's a good framing move. | | An obvious solution could be revenue-share similar to how | YouTube does - post a viral tweet that generates $x in ad | revenue for Twitter, receive some percentage of that. Make it | available only to blues who pay and ... (Musk if you use this | send me car or a rocket :P ) | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | With $8 each, you and your friends can pool your money, rent a | server run whatever you want. Fuck twitter. | serf wrote: | power to the people... for only 8 dollars a month! | | is anyone sick of this salesman shtick? it's even more egregious | when used as some form of crusade for the people. | | let's be clear here, the 8 dollars a month is the motivation. He | doesn't give two-shits about any moral sense of right or wrong or | the well-being people that used the service. | | he'd be more respectable/relatable if he had said "It's 8 bucks a | month because I need to pay back the loans." | jiripospisil wrote: | I wanted to check how much it costs in Czechia adjusted for | purchasing power and quickly learned you cannot actually buy it | from here. Oh well. | | > We've launched Twitter Blue in the US, Canada, Australia, and | New Zealand. In these regions, Twitter Blue is available for in- | app purchase on Twitter for iOS and Android, or on twitter.com | through our payment partner Stripe. | aantix wrote: | I don't see where you can subscribe - interested in seeing the | flow. | seydor wrote: | Why do people think that twitter is worth paying for? | SilverBirch wrote: | Take a look at Linkedin, they make tonnes of revenue from | premium features. The problem is that Twitter suddenly deciding | that it's going to create a brand new revenue stream by | charging for features that don't exist is about as sane a | strategy as me deciding I'm going to start developing gills | before my next swimming lesson. | seydor wrote: | Linkedin has the CVs -- the content i ve seen there is | laughable. Twitter can be compared to Wordpress, in which | people invest time in making an online presence and | following. But it seems easy for them to leave twitter and | take their audience too - and many people do it with substack | etc. I think introducing payments will change the dynamics of | their crowd, which is basically a mob. | mikkergp wrote: | The thing with LinkedIn is that I could see paying for it, | because you could make a connection with actual monetary | value (The ability to get a job at a higher salary). | abudabi123 wrote: | Twitter is worth paying for when you leave a not addictive | session on the app in better condition than you arrived. What | if Elon M. unlocks access for Twitter to China at $8 a month? | n65463f23_4 wrote: | people are actually freaking out that they might lose their | blue checkmarks | blibble wrote: | more like they're freaking out they'll lose the status from | having something not everyone can buy | memish wrote: | If you're not paying for it, you're the product. | Goronmon wrote: | And if you're paying for it, you're still the product. | | Just a product with slightly less disposable income. | giantrobot wrote: | You're still the fucking product even if you pay for it. | They're not going to track you any less. They'll just show | you fewer _overt_ ads. But now every spammer will get | "priority speech" so the end effect is you'll see the same or | more actual ads. | beebmam wrote: | Seems like the payment is the opposite of what it should be. | Twitter is collecting data on me and selling it to other | businesses. They should be paying ME. | foolfoolz wrote: | people pay for dopamine hits every day just cause it's not | yours doesn't mean no one likes it | smittywerben wrote: | Sometimes my Tweets aren't even in the always-dead bin. In some | cases, I would rather be in the penis bin than have shadowbanned | Tweets. | | People should Tweet directly at the person instead of wasting my | (VALUABLE) reply space with OT insults. | | I already pay $5 for nothing at Twitter. I'm happy paying $3 more | for a feature I'll actually use. | hunglee2 wrote: | The good news is that this should definitely reduce the volume of | bot / troll accounts, by making it prohibitively expensive to | run. That will mean a reduction of disinformation on aggregate - | as what other purpose would there be to run a bot network? | | The bad news is that it recreates the lords vs servants dynamic | that Musk is claiming to want to get rid of. $8 is not much for | everyone reading on HN, but guess what, we are very much the in | the globally privileged 1%. He later adds something about | purchasing power equivalent, but localised pricing suddenly makes | this into a much bigger technical challenge | jjfoooo4 wrote: | $8 won't necessarily price out spam accounts. As a counter | example, on Tinder there are many fake/spam accounts with | premium membership. | hunglee2 wrote: | not all of them, no, but as _any_ cost increases the friction | of doing it, so less will be done. | Yoofie wrote: | But with spending money, you can theoretically have more | information on the buyer which you can use to help identify | and fight spammers/bots & their networks. For example, you | can limit one twitter account per credit card or registered | user (identified via payment method). If they are found to be | spammers, you just kill the account and ban the payment | account(s). They can still obviously work around this, but | the cost and difficulty for the spammer increases. | | I don't know how the financial transactions & stuff work in | the background, but the point is that you have more | information and more options. | ljw1001 wrote: | Unlimited conspiracy theories and Russian trolls - free | matrix_overload wrote: | Your own bullshit detection skills and the habit to | verify/cross-reference all incoming information - priceless. | tlhunter wrote: | Only disabling half of the ads makes sense from a business point | of view. Most likely, the users who are the best audience for an | ad (in the sense that they have spare money and might purchase an | advertised product) are the ones that would actually spend money | disable ads. | | There will probably be a new advertisement segment for users of | Twitter blue. Companies will be able to advertise specifically to | users willing to pay to disable ads aka more likely to have | disposable income. Premium ads for the high spenders. | kylecazar wrote: | Twitter Blue is an existing, separate service from the verified | checkmark. | booleandilemma wrote: | It would have been great if, after taking Twitter private, Musk | just immediately shut it down. | | Would it have made any financial sense? Of course not. Would it | have been the ultimate post-modern, trollish, liberating move | imaginable? Absolutely. | rchaud wrote: | To be honest, this sounds more like a child's revenge of taking | his ball and going home. | | It really wouldn't even be worth it either, because Musk is | worshipped on Twitter and Reddit and nowhere else. He isn't | Trump, he can't mobilize half a country to love him | unquestioningly. This is the only place where his childish | taunts about turning Twitter HQ into a homeless shelter will | find an audience. | rsync wrote: | How much can I pay for the ability to follow a twitter link and | easily see who is replying to whom and where I am in the | discussion thread ? | | It's a tough engineering problem but surely _someone_ could solve | it ... | MopMop wrote: | Freedom of Speech is not free if you have to pay a monthly fee to | express your opinion. We can already see them lining up to part | with their salaries. | dgudkov wrote: | There are lots of places where you can express your opinion | absolutely free of charge. For instance, HN ;) | memish wrote: | You don't have to. It'll still be free for anons. | ruminator1 wrote: | verified users get priority in replies, mentions and search. | Anons will be buried. | arctics wrote: | Before: F2P, every voice matters (you decide who is who) After: | P2P, some voices matter more (we will decide who is who for you) | tough wrote: | What if I already have the checkmark and cant afford to pay? Will | they take it away? | muttantt wrote: | I think if someone can't afford $8 for Twitter Blue, they | should probably get off of Twitter and find more ways to make | money. There is plenty of work all around. | dorkwood wrote: | To me it's more that I'm unwilling to take on any more | subscriptions. They all seem small in isolation, but they | accumulate into a meaningful sum. | apeace wrote: | There are plenty of hard-working people who wouldn't want to | budget $8/month for something nonessential like a social | media app. There's no need to disparage them. | cypress66 wrote: | Then don't get something nonessential such as the blue | checkmark. You can still use Twitter. | tough wrote: | I already have it. It's due to the account being of a | fairly big online thing I built circa 2008. That no | longer exists. A blue checkmark was only given to people | with impersonation problems, if you proved that any media | (newspaper, online blogs,etc) had published about you, | making that noteworthy. | | I have a blue checkmark, and twitter doesn't know who I | am technically. | plaidfuji wrote: | Why stop at open-sourcing "the algorithm" when you can open- | source the business model too? | paxys wrote: | It's funny how quickly the conversation has jumped from "Twitter | will be a bastion of free speech" to "$8/mo is a fair price to | pay for prioritizing your speech over others". Power to the | people indeed. | happytiger wrote: | FreedomTM by Twitter | | Now you can experience FreedomTM for _only_ $8 /mo. | | _License and taxes extra. May not be available in Hawaii and | Alaska. Freedom is a registered trademark of Twitter, Inc. Some | users experience nausea and vomiting, shingles, anxiety, and | social destruction._ | concinds wrote: | Verified users are already boosted in replies and search. | That's been the case for many years. The only change is that | since verification will require payment, boosting will require | that same payment. It's a complete non-story. | uoaei wrote: | The difference of course being that what used to be a | painstaking verification process is now bypassed by anyone | with $8/mo to spare, if they choose to do so. | | It is in fact not a non-story, since obviously this changes | everything about how "verified" users should be considered in | your feed (as nothing more than pay-to-play, where before | there was at least a facade of curation). | concinds wrote: | Since you're disputing my comment and not the parent, I | take it you agree that making people pay for verification | is somehow "anti free speech", while promoting verified | users when it was an opaque process was not? The comment | I'm responding to is incoherent, in addition to being | flamebait. | tfsh wrote: | How's it a non-story if you now just need to pay to boost | your replies and search presence? | xkcd-sucks wrote: | "free as in speech, not as in beer" | baby wrote: | > for prioritizing your speech over others | | how is that prioritizing your speech over others? There's a | million ways to do it, and if you're a big boy you're probably | throwing the big bucks. 8/mo is indeed not that much. | elorant wrote: | What's so special about the verification icon? Does it provide | any merits? | baby wrote: | clout | pkulak wrote: | Elon is the PM from hell. Has some shower thought and starts | throwing tickets on everyone's board 45 minutes later. | | This is why the Model X has those silly doors. | corytheboyd wrote: | My goodness the weight people put behind the verification check | mark sounds absolutely insane as a person who is not at all | invested in Twitter. As an outsider, this sounds like the only | way to combat scammers on the platform, assuming non-paying | viewers have an easy way to only see content from paying users. | schmichael wrote: | Your own mastodon instance is $6/mo: https://masto.host/pricing/ | hnarayanan wrote: | For a network with 5 active users! | schmichael wrote: | Sure but you can federate with whomever you please. So $6 | gets you 5 local accounts, but you can still follow anyone in | the fediverse. | entropicgravity wrote: | Yeah this is reasonable. For those who want or need it $100/yr is | affordable but more than most would pay just to have it but don't | need it. Off course it's mostly a mechanism to strengthen the | bottom line but if it's value for money then go ahead. | jxdxbx wrote: | Verification is more of a benefit to Twitter than to verified | users. At least for mega celebs. I am verified because years ago | I knew someone who worked at Twitter. I wouldn't pay a penny for | it though. | empressplay wrote: | My suspicion is that the name on the payment method will be the | verification, eg f you use a credit card named John Smith, your | 'full name' will be uneditable and reflect that. | sliken wrote: | Seems pretty weird to me. I read an article that the top 5% of | users are responsible for 90% of tweets and most of the profit. | Said 5% have been leaving the platform for the last few months. | | Now there's a $8/Month incentive for the top users to leave ... | seems backwards. They should be paying the top users to stay so | the 95% has something to read. | | Imagine if youtube creators had to pay instead of be paid. | registeredcorn wrote: | >Imagine if youtube creators had to pay instead of be paid. | | Isn't that essentially what demonetization is, just without the | predictability of a regular monthly bill? | | Granted, it's not a perfect 1:1, I just wanted to find an | excuse to snipe at YouTube. | BryanBeshore wrote: | You will also get: | | - Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to | defeat spam/scam | | - Ability to post long video & audio | | - Half as many ads | joenathanone wrote: | >- Priority in replies, mentions & search | | He starts off with "Power to the people", but this is just | "power to the people with money"(which is the status quo). If | you don't have $8/mo disposable income to spend on a vanity | feature, then what you have to say will be overshadowed by the | people who do. | memish wrote: | The status quo is that you need to be a Lord to get the blue | check. | | This makes it available to anyone who is able to get a | Netflix subscription. | | It goes from a status symbol to a commodity. The Lords will | _hate_ it because it makes it available to the peasants. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | Not in my experience. I follow plenty of blue tick accounts | that aren't lords, merely notable within a niche. | nisegami wrote: | He did say it will be scaled by PPP by region, which is | interesting. Curious to see how that will play out, if taken | literally I should be paying like $3 USD which seems fine to | me but is still out of reach of most of my country for | logistic reasons rather than outright money reasons. | aniforprez wrote: | That part of the thread pretty much proved that he hasn't | thought out this whole scheme at all. He's spitballing in | public on twitter | rodgerd wrote: | "You get as much speech as you want to pay for" is probably | the single least surprising take from the VC elite. | tedunangst wrote: | So now it's pay to spam? | Maxburn wrote: | ONLY half the ads!! | moepstar wrote: | ...but you gotta be grateful for it! (or else...) | Yizahi wrote: | Only half a billion ads instead of a billion. Also | conveniently not mentioning any metrics, ad size, length, | persistence etc. | trh0awayman wrote: | I would pay $10 a month for Twitter Black - it would block | everyone with Twitter Blue and you get to interact with the | dregs, the most controversial figures of all of Twitter, based on | most reports/blocks/flags, etc. (minus the bots, crypto stuff). | | That's the real town square. Let me sleep in the gutter! | chihuahua wrote: | You're in luck - that's what Parler is, and it's free! | __tmk__ wrote: | Most of that will be crypto spam though... | thebeastie wrote: | Bypass paywalls would be kind of a big deal imo. It could | eventually shape how we use the internet and move away from ad | based revenue. | ch4s3 wrote: | This was definitely the part that stood out to me, but it | really relies on the deals they can strike. | thebeastie wrote: | It makes sense. It's ridiculous to have to subscribe to | individual news websites when there are so many; an | intermediary that did deals with publishers wouldn't be a bad | idea. | KIFulgore wrote: | If Elon can get enough publishers on board I'd gladly pay | more than $8/mo. Maybe offer a tiered system. Or better | yet, choose-your-own. | | $8/mo: Choose 2 | | $12/mo: Choose 4 | | $15/mo: Choose 6 | | etc. | | Then people vote with their dollars which sources are | important to them. | | Simplicity would be challenging. It wouldn't work if it | devolves into something resembling tiered Cable TV | packages. | fckgw wrote: | It's been a feature for a long time. For some reason it was | removed today and now Elon has "reintroduced" it as a new | feature? | | https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/1/23434502/twitter-blue-ad-... | tough wrote: | Smart. Now he can charge for something that was already | shipped and get the credit lol | type-r wrote: | interesting approach to have it be PPP adjusted. i wonder how | they'll prevent people from high income countries faking they're | in a lower income one. | lapcat wrote: | On iOS, Apple will of course demand $2.40 of that $8. | hendersoon wrote: | "Half as many ads"? They want us to pay and still show ads? | | I have an alternative suggestion. How about I don't pay Twitter | one red cent and continue to block their ads? | rnxrx wrote: | Maybe I'm missing something but wouldn't the paid-for check mark | also mean that a given account can be more specifically targeted, | thus increasing the potential ad revenue to Twitter? | paxys wrote: | Which is exactly why people on this plan will still be shown | ads. | mypastself wrote: | This might be my ignorance of macroeconomics speaking, but | doesn't the Purchasing Power Parity reference imply that the | price should be the same worldwide? | [deleted] | marktangotango wrote: | I really wish twitter didn't exist. The utility I see in it is | limited. For example, I don't have an account, but I do view | tweets from time to time. The tweets I generally view are related | to some real time event I'm interested in (ie news). I find the | fact that even then, there is usually an endless stream of mostly | banal, vapid responses to be very off putting. | | Not only do I find the content vastly uninteresting, the way the | content on twitter is reported by mainstream media is exhausting. | I could really care less about the stream of conscious tweeting | of celebrities and politicians. It's not "news worthy" in my | estimation. | | But clearly a lot of people find it useful, I am completely | mystified how this could be. | thebigspacefuck wrote: | All you really need is RSS | ljosifov wrote: | I find Twitter good. Many interesting people and ideas, that | I'd never would've come upon on my own probably. I find the | short message format forces people to really distill their | idea. The SNR on my TL seems fairly high imho. | | It looks like I'm using it exactly the opposite of your "real | time event" mode. I follow people that are not journalists and | don't comment on people nor events. Strictly ideas. There are | other media much better suited to covering people and events | and in real-time. | | Not having an account - don't see how that can work. In | incognito - which I presume is similar to me not having an | account - I get to see only a single page with few messages, | nothing more. And ofc not possible to follow accounts and thus | shape the TL. | | I never subscribe to trends, themes, areas of interest and | similar devices used by Twitter to guess what tweets I'd like | to see. Twitter is hopeless there (as is the rest of social | media). Just "show me what the account I selected to follow | posted" is plenty good. I can't divine why Twitter does not do | that only, why the extra complications wrt what messages I see | on my TL. It's not like it can't show me enough adverts while | showing only messages from accounts I follow. | | Aside: I'm mystified how one goes from "don't like it" to | "should not exist". Why, what's wrong with "live and let live"? | aschearer wrote: | Maybe Twitter just isn't for you, that's fine. Why go so far as | to wish it doesn't exist? I don't like football but don't want | to take it away from its fans -- even though it consumes so | much time, money, and attention. | | To share another perspective, as a gamedev I'll miss Twitter. I | doubt there will ever be as many creative people sharing their | works in one place again. Things will get siloed and harder to | find. Today, it's pretty cool to sign in and see amazing, | inspiring work-in-progress. Reddit doesn't come close in my | experience. | bombcar wrote: | > But clearly a lot of people find it useful, I am completely | mystified how this could be. | | Because it's internet boredom distilled into its purest form. | | And it's popular with journalists because now they don't even | have to leave their house to ask the "man on the street" | questions, they can just read twitter and regurgitate what they | saw and be done with it. More and more articles are just | Twitter posts reformatted, and once you start noticing it it | gets painfully obvious how much there is. | neon_electro wrote: | LinkedIn has also taken this cue and also regurgitates | LinkedIn posts on its trending topics equivalent. I like the | topics, I don't think the sourcing on the "hot takes from the | LinkedIn crowd" works very well but I guess it gets the | clicks. | cgh wrote: | I follow scientists, mathematicians, authors, comic creators, | comedians and so forth. I stay away from politics for the most | part (I'm not American so they mostly don't apply to me | anyway). I do follow some military analysts re Ukraine. | | Today, for example, the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder posted a | series of tweets criticising this article: | https://phys.org/news/2022-10-bell-theorem-quantum-genuinely... | | It was interesting to read and I'm not sure how I'd have seen | her thoughts otherwise, unless she makes one of her YouTube | videos about it. | | I'm not trying to say Twitter is the greatest or even that you | should join, just that Twitter has a lot of interesting people | posting stuff that has nothing to do with politics or celebrity | culture and some of us find it valuable. | legitster wrote: | My friend was in a doctoral program and everyone in it spent | ALL DAY on Twitter. It almost became a coordination platform | for them, and I get the distinct impression that the field | largely homologized from it. | | So I guess it's kind of neat in one regard, but I think | people might underrate how powerfully it rounds away distinct | viewpoints or novel findings. | legitster wrote: | It's very frustrating too how it feels like it has become a | black hole for journalists. Instead of actually doing | reporting, it seems most spend all day on Twitter and just | regurgitate the same few talking points as everyone else. | tyrust wrote: | My understanding was that value of verification was, well, | verification that you were, in fact, that person [0]. I wonder if | this property will be maintained. | | Otherwise, impersonators can pay to get the blue check. In the | long term, maybe this is fine, but in the short term every | Twitter user is going to have to adjust from the old meaning of | the blue check (user $foo is actually person $foo) to the new | meaning (user $foo pays $8/mo). | | [0] - "The blue Verified badge in Twitter lets people know that | an account of public interest is authentic" - | https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-01 23:00 UTC)