NEWS: Twitter will halt handing out blue verification badges until AFTER the Tues US Midterm elections, per people familiar
w/ @kateconger @RMac18 https://t.co/4L1EctMTIn
— rat king đ (@MikeIsaac) November 6, 2022
…[M]any Twitter users and employees raised concerns that the new pay-for-play badges could cause confusion ahead of Tuesdayâs elections because users could easily create verified accounts â say, posing as President Biden or as lawmakers or news outlets and publishing false information about voting results â which could potentially sow discord. In an internal Slack channel on Saturday, one Twitter employee asked why the social network was âmaking such a risky change before elections, which has the potential of causing election interference.â
A manager working on the verification badge project responded on Sunday that âweâve made the decision to move the launch of this release to Nov. 9, after the election.â
Twitter, whose communications team has been almost entirely laid off, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nov. 9 is the day immediately following Tuesdayâs election, and many races may still be undecided as votes are tallied…
(But there’s also persistent rumors that the new verification process launch isn’t going well at all, so delaying further highly public changes might be self-protective as well.)
I had heard that Ross Perot's company was famous for trying to build the plane while flying it, metaphorically speaking. Twitter is currently trying to vandalize the plane while flying it into a mountain.
— Jort-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) November 5, 2022
day 1: take over company
day 2: fire everyone whose job is to point out when ideas are bad
day 3-6: put out as many bad ideas as possible, like a bad idea machine gun
day 7: oh no where did the money go https://t.co/QdMt1aYBOh
— Rob DenBleyker (checkmark) (@RobDenBleyker) November 4, 2022
No doubt there are plenty of ex-employees (for instance, H1B holders) who will return… assuming Somebody is willing to increase the incentives for doing so…
Multiple sources and Twitter Blind chats now saying that the company has begun to reach out to some people it laid off yesterday asking them to come back. Whoops! ??
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 6, 2022
Let me be the first to preemptively congratulate Jeff Bezos for regaining his position as the world's richest man.
— Robert Tracinski (@Tracinski) November 5, 2022
Now that Elon Musk has shown me how entertaining it is to watch a crazy rich asshole who can't affect my life in any way, I finally understand what white male journalists love about Trump.
— Millard Fillmore's porcelain zither (@agraybee) November 5, 2022
Looking forward to seeing how the big-name advertisers treat *this* news, come Monday:
"we will make our product unusable unless you pay us money" https://t.co/9B8EdxyQj8
— atticus goldfinch (@AtticusGF) November 5, 2022
hey advertisers: we'll do shitty recommendations for your products for users that don't pay us money. for those that do, we won't show them as many of your ads.
sound appealing?
— atticus goldfinch (@AtticusGF) November 5, 2022
On Twitter, the ‘main character of the day’ is the unfortunate tweeter whose dumb / bad / hilarious tweet(s) earn them general opprobrium on the site… until the next ‘main character’ emerges…
congratulations to twitter for launching an innovative anti-harassment feature: a permanent, global main character
— tanb leltang (@revhowardarson) November 6, 2022
John Revolta
So I’ve been asking myself the old question: If Musk was purposely trying to tank the company, while trying maybe to maintain a plausible deniability- what would he be doing different?
Stuart Frasier
While I’m waiting for the next big shoe to drop in the crypto dumpster fire, the Twitter saga is giving me my daily dose of schadenfreude.
brantl
Twitter is currently trying to vandalize the plane while flying it into a mountain. Jebus, that’s a world-class sentence in 14 words.
Suzanne
I joined Mastodon last night. I have had a Twitter account for years, but have posted fewer than ten times, I estimate. I enjoyed following certain accounts, though, especially during the shut-in years. I donât expect that Iâll be much more active on Mastodon. To inaugurate my account, I posted a picture of a tree.
mrmoshpotato
Good grief, Elon Musk is a slapdick.
Oh shut up, you whiny ass titty bitchass!
Another Scott
Elmo’s themesong?? Mayor of Simpleton (3:41)
Except that Elmo doesn’t love us. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
The worse this goes the more he’s going to try and make up the difference via war profiteering. That concerns me. I don’t like the guy and I’ve never been big on Twitter, but I can’t get excited about him failing. I don’t want him succeeding either. My preference is that Twitter miraculously fails to fall apart until after Ukraine kicks Russia to the curb.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato: It’s amazing how quickly one’s opinion of Elon Musk became a sign of toxic masculinity. Like, if I was single, and some dude told me that he admired Elon Musk, I’d be like, “Check, please” and GTFOutta there.
Frank Wilhoit
@brantl: He’s not flying it into a mountain. He’s flying it into a cornfield.
dmsilev
At this point, the lettuce that outlasted Truss’s prime ministership looks to be a better bet for competence in leadership. Similar to baseball’s WAR (Wins Above Replacement), I propose Management Above Lettuce (MAL) as a measure of competence in corporate leadership. Â Musk has a negative MAL.
dmsilev
@Suzanne: Itâs impressive, isnât it? I mean, heâs been a world-class asshole for years (example: the episode several years back about those kids in Thailand trapped in a cave) but now itâs just absolutely impossible to ignore or overlook the sheer pervasiveness and scale of his assholishness.
Jackie
@Another Scott: How did our adorable Sesame Street Elmoâs name get hi-jacked to mock an asshole?đą
sdhays
@John Revolta: The only reason to not think that he’s purposely trying to tank the company is because that would make tens of billions of his own dollars disappear, and rich people hate that, even if the can’t actually tell the difference (and they can’t).
He’s just very stupid, smarter only than the extremely stupid people who went in on the deal with him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jackie: Sesame Street’s Elmo is awful as well.
Suzanne
@dmsilev: It’s totally staggering.
I really donât understand rich people. Like, if you have enough money to live out the rest of your life in luxuryâŠ.why fuck that up by being so flagrant?
sdhays
@Jackie: I would have preferred Elmu, myself. But I guess the visual of “tech titan master genius” Elon Musk as a simple red puppet was just too enticing.
Suzanne
Spawn the Youngest just responded to my admonition to walk rather than run in the house by prancing around the dining room, knees up high like a dressage horse.
Children can be such tools.
dmsilev
@Jackie: Unfortunately, the Tickle Me Musk dolls werenât selling well and there were all those ‘harassment’ and ‘assault’ charges, so a rebranding was needed.
different-church-lady
At this rate Jack will be buying the place back for pennies on the dollar.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
He’s always been a born-rich a-hole.
trollhattan
@Suzanne: Challenge him to do it backwards.
mrmoshpotato
@Frank Wilhoit: He’s flying up his own ass.
Doug R
I suspect the suspension of the pay to play verification scheme is that Valerie Bertinelli had paid to be “verified” as Elon Musk.
I see she’s gone back to being herself (sigh)
https://twitter.com/Wolfiesmom/status/1589311917365284864
(edit)
I see Kathy Griffin has taken up the hammer:
https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1589324650374639616
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Kids!
Jackie
@Omnes Omnibus: My young granddaughters beg to differ!
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL!
MazeDancer
Anne Laurie, as a cartoon fan, ICYMI, George Booth died at 96.
Classic.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
The kiddo has discovered Monty Python. đ
jnfr
I actually love Twitter, and find it useful both as a person and as an organizer. I think it’s an important global communication channel, and when Musk kills it off as he likely will that will be a great loss.
I’ve also been online since 1993 and I know we built all this shit from scratch in that time. So I know if we have to we can do it again.
SpaceUnit
Musk is like a rhinestone cowboy in a Wild West show who twirls his pistols around in the air for seven minutes and then shoots himself in the dick.
mrmoshpotato
I look forward to football next weekend when all of these stupid political ads will have gone bye bye.
Geminid
@sdhays: As someone pointed out yesterday, Musk won’t just lose his own money but other people’s as well. He’d likely be better off in the long run if it was just his. And a lot of Tesla’s inflated stock price is held up by Musk’s prestige, I think, and that’s where the greater risk is for him.
ian
@Jackie: I refer you to this lovely image created by the wonderful Driftglass. It may or may not answer your question.
mrmoshpotato
@MazeDancer: Haha
Dangerman
@Doug R: Valerie Bertinelli retweeting as Elon Musk?
That wasnât hard
these are mean tweets
/van halen
Jinchi
@sdhays: Itâs amazing to see a man spend so much effort looking for ways to pay $0 in taxes, then turn around and set billions of dollars on fire.
jackmac
What in the ever-loving f**k is going on in my bright blue Illinois?
President Biden was here campaigning on Friday and Saturday. Vice President Harris is here today and the sadly-diminished but still important reporting voice of the Chicago Tribune says the visits âunderscored the belief that races across the ballot have tightened ahead of Tuesdayâs election.â With so many other close and critical races elsewhere, neither has any business being here. Even President Obama was here recently (he came to vote, but also do some campaigning). âšâšThere should be a blue blowout across the board and state constitutional office from governor on down and legislative dominance appear to be safe. But GOP successes in a couple of Supreme Court races could give Republicans a majority on the court and threaten progressive agendas. Worse, are at least three Dem-held congressional seats (Sean Casten, Lauren Underwood and an open Dem seat in northwest Illinois) in jeopardy?
Can someone please talk me off the ledge. Thanks.
Baud
@jnfr:
People like you who find value in Twitter always made it tempting for me. I never found a way to make it work for me though.
MazeDancer
@mrmoshpotato:
That cartoon first appeared n The New Yorker in 1976. Gonna be funny til the end of time
John Revolta
@sdhays: Well yeah- but I’m thinking that he’s already resigned to taking a bath and that perhaps if he tanks it sooner rather than later, it could be not as bad somehow. Taxwise, or something. And just put the fucking thing behind him as quick as possible.
Starfish
These were real people’s jobs. We had a small local Twitter office and the estimate is that 87 out of 200 people here lost their jobs.
WSJ is saying that there is going to be a big Facebook layoff this coming week as well.
Baud
@Starfish:
Every company we dislike hires real people to do real work.
mrmoshpotato
@jackmac: Bastards want a horse race. I haven’t looked at any polls. I just voted blue.
Starfish
@Baud: I made a Green Balloons list, so people from here could more easily find each other.
Ken
@Suzanne: That’s why I was disappointed with this announcement of a delay in the plan. I have been enjoying the number of Elon fanboys who have assured the world that each business decision was part of a genius master plan, and then had to walk it back* when Elon reversed course. Outright cancellation of the blue payment scheme would have given me more amusement.
* Though it’s not so much walking back, as a full “we have always been at war with Eastasia” denial that reality had ever been different.
SpaceUnit
@jackmac:
Our MSM is waging psyche warfare on behalf of their beloved GOP, hoping to suppress Democratic turnout. Â Ignore.
NotMax
The more things change….
:)
Starfish
@Baud: I know at least two people in town who got laid off. I think they had been there for five or more years, which is a long time in tech career time.
Tech career time seems to involve bouncing every couple of years to learn the new stuff.
Baud
Funny https://i.redd.it/wfnbm8k8key91.png
John Revolta
@jackmac: Check this out (from Anne Laurie’s earlier post):
Link
Baud
@Starfish:
Online advertising is down, but Facebook and Twitter are especially in trouble because of bone headed moves made by their owners.
Dangerman
@Suzanne: Well, I think itâs safe to say Elon doesnât believe in safe sex. I think heâs nearly to a baseball team, football team here we come.
Another Scott
@Baud: Zuckerberg and Musk set tens of billions of dollars on fire. Here’s why that’s bad news for Joe Biden.
[/DougJBalloon]
Cheers,
Scott.
jackmac
@John Revolta:Â â
Thanks John Revolta. I did see the post. That is encouraging from a macro perspective. I just hope that trend plays out in places like Illinois where there might be some complacency. Like everywhere else, Republicans here have gotten awful and shouldn’t be anywhere near governing. Sorry, feeling some pre-election nerves and pondering worst-case scenarios. And the Bears lost today. On the plus side, my local Democratic headquarters was bustling and it is sunny and a lovely 61 degrees. Great weather for leaf-raking.
mrmoshpotato
What an assclown.
Beware: Dump’s disgusting face inside.
Redshift
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine anything less likely to happen than “we’re going to roll out a new feature from announcement to production in about a week while having massive layoffs.”
Claiming they’re going to have it done one day later is hilarious.
Starfish
@Baud: Indeed. Something said that 1% of the funds for Elon buying Twitter came from some crypto thing.
People in crypto losing their money fits my just-world hypothesis.
dnfree
@jackmac: Does Tri Swine Omega mean anything to you?
Redshift
@MazeDancer:
Aww, he was always one of my favorites.
I’m reminded of one of his cartoons that seems particularly relevant, and I kind of wish wasn’t “timeless.” The husband is laughing over his newspaper, and his worried wife is telling her friend “he’s always enjoyed his morning paper, but it’s only recently he’s developed that graveyard laugh…”
Miss Bianca
@SpaceUnit: LOL!!
jackmac
@dnfree: Yes it does — at least as it applies to Northern Illinois University. But it slightly predates me.
Frankensteinbeck
@sdhays:Â â
Musk couldn’t afford to pay for Twitter by himself. His gigantic wealth is almost all assets like Tesla stock that could come crashing down at any moment. He legitimately could beggar himself if Twitter collapses, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer man.
@Ken:Â â
Jebus Christmas, Musk fanboys are bizarre. I’m used to Conservative Whispering, and the psychology that makes their reality denial work. Musk fanboys are a step beyond. Everything he does is part of some new brilliant plan. When Twitter sued Musk to force him to go through with the contract, they were convinced this was All According To Plan and Musk would force Twitter to reveal the real bot numbers, destroy Twitter financially, and be able to waltz away having gotten everything he wanted and spent nothing. Currently they think the $8 verification plan is obvious good business and that anyone who complains is admitting to [Admit Character Flaw Here].
MazeDancer
@Redshift: Mr. Booth was always good at pinpointing the eternal.
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck: Itâs bonkers.
What theyâre really invested in is the success of mediocre white men with rich parents. I canât imagine why.
I would sign to end the sarcasm, but oh boy, Iâm not done. Thereâs a lot more sarcasm to come on this subject!
WaterGirl
@jackmac: I had the same worries myself when I learned at the end of last week that they were coming to Illinois. Â But worrying won’t help, we just have to keep going.
dnfree
@jackmac: I knew someone by a nickname similar to your nym at the Northern Star. I was a minor member of the copy desk maybe 1963-1965.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I can’t tell what’s real and what’s snark anymore.
jackmac
@WaterGirl: You are absolutely correct. I guess I needed to rant a bit. Seeing my local Dem HQ in action earlier today was encouraging. There was a lot of phone outreach and I was able to pick up a cool bi-lingual Lauren Underwood sign featuring Day of the Dead imagery.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
That is snark.
jackmac
@dnfree: I was but a youngster in that era and navigating third grade (in 1963).
Anne Laurie
@MazeDancer: George Booth’s cranky bull terriers were my spirit animals since I was barefly capable of reading captions (which the bull terriers mostly didn’t need, anyways).
Reminded that, originally, ‘only the good die young’ meant ‘some people leave us too soon, no matter how old they are chronologically’…
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
I think his main appeal is to men (especially young and white) who see themselves as smarter than everyone around them. Â Itâs Galtian. Â Musk acts like they do, including the style of assholery. Â He created* some things they think are cool and would require genius to build. Â Heâs extremely rich. Â He validated them, makes them think they are naturally superior and it just hasnât paid off yet.
Itâs the mental gymnastics they go through as he fails again and again and again that boggles me. Â Theyâre not content with âThis one fact suits my prejudices, I can stop thinking now.â Â They have to come up with explanations.
*bought and claimed he created
Miki
Apropos of everything:
Poem by Guante (Kyle Tran Myhre) at iwillvote.com
Voting as a Fire Extinguisher
When the haunted house catches fire: a moment of indecision.
The house was, after all, built on blood, and bad intentions.
Everyone who enters the house feels that overwhelming dread, the evil that perhaps only fire can purge.
It’s tempting to just let it burn.
And then I remember: there are children inside.
Â
Â
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: Yeah, those guys think Musk is a hero from an Ayn Rand novel. But he’s really more like a hero from an Ayn Rando novel.
MazeDancer
@Anne Laurie:
Just read his wife of 64 years died 6 days ago.
Here’s the cover of The New Yorker, Nov 4, 1985. One of your spirit pups feeling spirted.
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh, I agree. Definitely appeals to the resentful white dude cohort.
dnfree
@jackmac: Thanks for answering! Â Might have been a relative? Â Iâm glad to meet someone else from NIU on Balloon-Juice.
trollhattan
WTAF. It’s Herschel time–leaning into Martians.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1589376446333845506?cxt=HHwWhIDQoaDdzI4sAAAA
marklar
@trollhattan: Herschel then broke into the Jonathan Richmond song….
“Martian time, time, timeWell, it’s Martian rhyme timeWe got a Martian rhyme for Martian, Martian timeAnd the Martians got notebooks in their little handWell, they’re strangers in this landMartian time it’s Martian, Martian time”
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
It’s called toxic humanity.
If they can’t have everything, no one else should have anything. And it’s justified by some accounting of something something of value to someone.
We used to call it toxic masculinity – which of course still exists but now there are women in on the scam, maybe not as loudly in on it but in on it. Think Boebert or MTG. So from here on out I’m calling it toxic humanity.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: But those two have no humanity.
jnfr
@Baud:
I can really understand that. It takes some effort to make it worthwhile.
trnc
In what universe can a “verified account” be easily created by literally anybody? JFC.
George
@Suzanne: I am way late to the game with this comment, but it is not a matter of not understanding rich people. It is a matter of not understanding malignant/vindictive narcissists and psychopaths. Musk definitely is the former and likely is the latter.
Steve in the ATL
@Redshift: I remember that one! Â Of course I spent many hours of my childhood reading and re-reading my parentsâ coffee table book of his cartoons.
Jinchi
Musk has actually called this “verified paid” in an interview. Once you realize that, it all makes sense, in a stupid way.
He keeps the “blue check” symbol, but completely changes it’s meaning. It just verifies to the world that you’ve paid him $8 this month. It has nothing to do with you actually being the person you pretend to be. This is why you can lose your verification, despite being the same person you were yesterday.â
Ken
@Jinchi: Yeah, the only thing that’s verified is that they were able to charge $8 to a credit card number. They’re probably not even checking the name on the card matches any of the twitter account data.
Speaking of which, would anyone here trust Twitter with their credit card number?
satby
@Baud: Really? so much value!
Even more!
More value!
Three links max, or we could do this for hours.