here's a thought about elon musk's bullshit: yes he clearly has no idea what he's doing and shouldn't be allowed to do any of it. yes he completely forgot that his original idea was just to tax the celebs before he probably saw someone tweet a picture of a butt and went "AWOOGAH" and forgot what he was doing. but the thing he keeps saying about "lords and peasants" is kind of not a bad point, just not in the way he means it
in theory (imo) it benefits everyone on twitter for more people to be verified. as it is, the checkmark is a weird sign of fame and authority that it shouldn't be. pizzagate shithead jack posobiec has a checkmark, for example. putting aside the question of "should jack posobiec be allowed on twitter?" (no, lol) I think it's correct for him to have a checkmark in the sense that it's good, in general, for people to know that the person claiming to be someone online is not lying about their identity. in this case though he is lying about everything else, which is where I think the checkmark is a problem. if it's only given to accounts operated by journalists, government agencies, etc. then it comes with an inherent weight and authority that incorrectly leads a lot of people to believe that the account itself is trustworthy
so I guess my question is: should I be verified on twitter? I'm a relative nobody. I have a few podcasts with a fairly small audience, I occasionally stream on twitch to an even smaller audience, and I have a few hundred followers on twitter. I am not a notable person, but I am a real person and there are people who know me. there are people who could be tricked by someone pretending to be me. in fact, I have friends who have been impersonated on twitter before by bot accounts trying to scam other friends of ours out of money by posting a paypal link and saying they're struggling. on an ideal twitter, that shouldn't be possible!
the reason twitter started verifying accounts was to prevent things like that. it's an inherent good for people to be verified, and for reasons of practicality it makes sense that twitter would set a notability threshold because it's a process that needs a human behind it and they only have so many hours in the day. not to mention it's probably easier to verify a person that anyone has heard of compared to a random nobody like me
so I do think twitter would be better if everyone was verified and the checkmark lost its connotations of "I should trust what this person has to say" and only held the meaning of "I can trust that this person is who they say they are". would it make sense for the user to have to pay for the privilege? eh, maybe as a one-time fee? I'm kind of ambivalent about that part. what doesn't make sense though is the way that they're conflating "verification" ("we have done research on our end to be sure that this account is really themselves") and "premium subscription" ("we have received money from this person and give them a little badge"). this whole process, as it is currently, is total clown shit for so many reasons I've already said, and he seems to be intent on creating a new reason every 4 hours. but there was maybe a ten minute period where he might have accidentally stumbled onto something that could have improved twitter. maybe if he wasn't the world's most epic dipshit. oh well!