“Revolutions cannot be done with caution – Elon Musk told Twitter employees just two weeks ago -. So we want to try things, theoretically things that don’t destroy the whole system, but I think as long as we have the readiness to respond quickly to problems and fix them, everything will be fine.
Here, the revolution that affected the blue checkfor Twitter, it was a big problem.
Allow anyone to have it for a fee – whereas previously the social network only guaranteed it to celebrities and journalists on the basis of a case-by-case identity verification – it nearly brought down the system. Dozens of users bought the badge, impersonated famous people and companies and created no small economic damage.
One of the multinationals to pay the price was la Eli Lillywhose shares dropped 6% following a fake tweet – published on behalf of the pharmaceutical company – which promised “free insulin”.
This and other episodes forced the new owner of Twitter to suspend his revolution.
But now Musk tries again. To the blue check, which “people” will be able to buy, will be added the gold one for companies and the gray one for politicians and governments. The new system will go into effect by next Friday, December 2nd.
“All verified accounts will be manually authenticated. It’s painful but necessary,” Musk said, somewhat admitting his earlier mistake.
Who had criticized the new model – from writers like Stephen King to politics Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – Musk in recent weeks had always replied in the same way: “Your feedback is appreciable, but now he pays 8 dollars”. A sentence that galvanized the entrepreneur’s supporters and which, almost immediately, also became a t-shirt.The idea of revive the premium Twitter Blue servicewhich already existed before the advent of Musk but did not give the right to receive the blue check based on a monthly feehas two objectives: to monetize the social network as much as possible, purchased for 44 billion dollars, and to put an end to the disparity “between lords and peasants” on the platform.For Elon Musk, in fact, the blue check had become just a status: whoever owned it – according to the entrepreneur – was seen (or felt) above the other users.
