Brands that don't buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification

Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.

…

Threatening to remove verified checkmarks is a risky move given how many ‘Twitter alternative’ services like Threads and Bluesky are cropping up and how willing consumers appear to be to jump ship, with Threads rocketing to 100 million registrations in just five days. That said, it’s not like other efforts to drum up some additional cash, like increasing API pricing, have gone down especially well, either. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for him.

andrr_464,

Bro what is elon doing???

enu,

At this point, I’d say: Providing entertainment to the internet while also helping grow the fediverse

theTrainMan932,

Having never been on twitter myself I’m especially entertained, watching and laughing from a far corner of the internet

glimse,

Twitter has a bad reputation from the “buzzworthy” people. It was nowhere near as bad as the terminally online would have you believe. I’d even say it was a GREAT site before 2016.

It’s a social media platform. You (used to) choose whose tweets you saw. As such, it was easy to curate your account to stick to one kind of content. I never saw politics or sports, I only followed funny people. And I had every major brand straight up blocked

The 140 character days were like text Vine where you made a joke through constraints and I loved it

EnglishMobster,
@EnglishMobster@kbin.social avatar

Notably, Vine was created by Twitter.

And then Vine was axed by Twitter. (One of the dumbest mistakes Twitter ever made - look how successful TikTok is, and think that Twitter literally had that a decade ago and decided to shut it down.)

So really, Vine was just video Twitter, instead of Twitter being text Vine.

theTrainMan932,

I wasn’t really involved with social media back then sadly, but yes I did get that general impression. Before all the toxicity really overtook it around 2020 it did seem quite pleasant.

Shame really, corporate greed taking something quite nice and milking it so hard it’s absolutely ruined. Then again, it gives way to things like bluesky so i guess it has its upsides!

glimse,

See that’s the thing …toxicity DIDN’T take over, you just heard about it more.

This internet hate machine loves to pretend that the angry tweet screenshots they see reposted over and over are representative of the site as a whole while all the funny tweet screenshots they’ve laughed at are one in a million. But if you look at the usernames on the political ones it’s usually the same handful of people…like that guy who starts every other tweet with “Holy fucking shit, Trump just…” Or the Brooklyn dad guy

theTrainMan932,

I mean you know better than me (I’m not even on twitter so everything i see is just the internet perspective of it). I’ll take your word for it as you’re probably right!

andrr_464,

Thank God i just got suspended from it for absolutely no reason

givesomefucks,

A suspended account can’t be deleted without appealing your suspension, and I’m pretty sure no one even looks at those with Musk in charge.

So suspending accounts keep them as users. They’re not active users, but it’s better than nothing.

And honestly wouldn’t be the craziest shit Elon’s done this week. So he might actually be randomly suspending accounts to lock them in

007v2,

I think the combination of sheer incompetence and his overlord bosses wanting to kill Twitter. Which is wild to me, since it could have been used as a propaganda tool for him ultimately worth more than the money he paid for it, despite the ‘worth’ of the company. The guy lives in a bubble with yes men surrounding him. He is the epitome of the meme “is it me that’s wrong? - no everyone else is out of touch”.

anlumo,

A right-wing propaganda tool needs people outside of the right wing to look at it. He’s far too embedded into that space to be able to appeal to other groups.

jsveiga,

Since he started his act about buying Twitter I saw that as a personal vendetta to harm it - the ultimate tantrum for being mocked at there and not being under his control. He said he’d buy then backed off just to hurt Twitter’s value, but then when he was forced to buy it for the first offer value, he got even more butthurt.

It’s pretty clear that everything he’s done since is to get revenge and destroy it. It’s insane that some people keep praising his decisions towards Twitter as anything but ridiculous.

He’s the rich brat who doesn’t get brown nosed by the waiter in front of his date, then proceed to buy the restaurant just to fire the guy.

JDPoZ,
@JDPoZ@lemmy.world avatar

Admittedly, it’s very tinfoil hat - but I honestly believe Elon bought it to sink it.

He’s gotten favorable contracts for more profitable tangible ventures like Starlink from otherwise authoritarian countries over recent years, and I would be willing to bet that he agreed to buy and sink Twitter at the behest of said authoritarian types due to how Twitter has been a tool for not only journalists, but protesters and perhaps most importantly - whistleblowers looking to expose otherwise smoke-screened actions taken by totalitarian states who control their broadcast airwaves and large news sources.

Twitter is… or at least was by design - a platform where anyone could record and upload media of multiple kinds showing actual war crimes being committed with a real possibility of their cries being seen and heard by the whole world in a matter of hours.

Being able to destroy or even just hamper the ability of anyone in any country to do that is probably pretty attractive to types who like to otherwise control the flow of information in their dominions.

peereboominc,

But why? If Twitter is something he and his friends do not like it would be a better move to censor everything instead of pushing the users to other Twitter alternatives and spread the same message over there. Controlling is more valuable than pushing the users away.

blackbelt352,

Because, as an authoritarian regime, there is no way to meaningfully control and censor twitter unless you take the Great Firewall of China approach and even then, that is a very difficult to implement solution.

So the next best solution for an authoritarian to stop an unwanted message from spreading is destroying the platform, even better if it’s through a private, tenuously connected proxy, who you could plausibly deny connection to.

orrk,

there is no way that rich people could be some form of authoritarian aristocracy that sees themselves as divinely ordained the most capable leaders in existence because they have a lot of money and act on this belief…

Lazylazycat,

Surely there are easier ways to destroy it without making himself look really, really dumb.

I don’t think it’s they deep, I think he’s just quite stupid.

JDPoZ,
@JDPoZ@lemmy.world avatar

Hanlon’s razor I suppose… but I guess I still somehow give him too much credit.

You could be right…

TwilightVulpine,

Hanlon’s Razor shouldn’t apply to businessmen because acting machiavellian and feigning ignorance is in their interest. But he has so thoroughly ruined his “real life Iron Man” reputation, that I doubt that this is some master plan. Even his other companies have lost value due to how bad he is fumbling this.

paboppa,

Yeah he definitely could have slowly killed the platform without humiliating himself like he is

lolcatnip,

Hanlon’s razor is just a bad rule. Applying it would, for instance, let the entire Trump administration off the hook for the way they sabotaged everything they were in charge of. Were incompetent? Mostly, yes. But they were also malicious.

TwilightVulpine,

Yeah, Hanlon’s Razor is hardly a rule. But it can help to deal with regular people in your day to day life, rather than sinking into paranoia that everyone is out to get you.

However if we are talking about business and politicians, it’s pretty much their job to get one over people. All the profits and power that they can get is what they squeeze out of you.

And even when it comes to peers, that doesn’t account for prejudice. Someone who otherwise might not knowingly do anything bad to their neighbors might act differently to groups they hate.

mrbubblesort,
@mrbubblesort@kbin.social avatar

Remember back in 2015 ~ 16 when we thought Trump was playing 4d chess, but it turned out he was really actually that dumb all along? It's the same with Musk. We want to believe that someone who's had so much success has a secret plan or something, but sometimes they really are just stupid chucklefucks

keegomatic,
@keegomatic@kbin.social avatar

I’m not saying this to be an asshole, because I’m happy that you got to the right conclusion eventually, but I have to clarify for history’s sake: if you thought Trump was playing 4D chess in 2015-2016 then you were being duped. Most of us understood what he was from the get-go. Claims of 4D chess have always been stupid.

Again, I’m happy that you figured it out. Everyone makes mistakes. But “we” didn’t think he was playing 4D chess. The hypothesis about Musk/Twitter above is hardly the same.

mrbubblesort,
@mrbubblesort@kbin.social avatar

Pleased don't lump me in with those people, I was only using "we" in the figurative sense. I've been anti-trump longer than many people on this site have been alive

keegomatic,
@keegomatic@kbin.social avatar

Fair enough!

silverbax,

If Elon bought it just to sink it, he would have just bought it, then shut it down.

He’s trying to build his ‘financial superstore’ idea from 20 years ago and it will be disastrous in a way that hasn’t even been seen yet.

Wait until this idiot starts implementing money transactions in Twitter and thousands of users suddenly have their bank accounts drained or worse.

It’s only a matter of time before something so bad happens that all the nonsense that he’s already done will be a footnote to the really big story.

Lemmylaugh,

Is he legally allowed to just shut down twitter?

elbarto777,

Yes. It’s a private company.

SkaveRat,

But he has obligations from his debtors

elbarto777,

Sure, but that’s another matter. If a laundromat has no desire to operate any longer, does it have to continue just because it has debt? I don’t think so.

SkaveRat,

sure, but with contracts as big like this, it’s highly likely that there are some special clauses that forbids him from just killing the project outright.

Also, he’d have a hard time coming up with the cash to pay off the 20B+ bucks he borrowed. He’s rich, but not in cash.

(not saying that this is the case at all, the more likelyhood is that he’s just an idiot)

oneofthemladygoats,

The value of TSLA is more relevant to his debt financing than whether Twitter is operating or not.

DrQuint,

Eh, with Elon, I prefer to assume stupidity over malice, because he also had already done shit to hurt his own image before he owned Twitter. Who was he being malignant against then? Himself? To own, uh, his supported??? Everything falls in place by just doing the single logical step of “he dumdum”.

jsveiga, (edited )

What about stupid malice, or maliciously stupid? :-)

Does a bully think being a bully hurts their image?

As an extreme narcissist, he can’t fathom the idea that anything he does can hurt his image. Surrounded by devoted minions, everything he does boosts his ego. He’s mauling Twitter, and thinks this projects a powerful image of himself.

I never liked this guy, I think he’s an narcissistic spoiled brat, but even then I can’t believe he could possibly be so stupid to think that things like throwing away the Twitter brand for “X” make sense.

penguin,

Didn’t he offer to buy it so he could sell a bunch of tesla shares without sinking the value? And then he tried to back out, but was forced to buy it.

be_excellent_to_each_other,
@be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social avatar

The most generous thing I can think of is that it's a social experiment to see just how many ways he can undercut a successful brand and platform before it completely implodes.

Deadeyegai,
@Deadeyegai@lemmy.world avatar

tHe SmArTeSt MaN iN tHe UnIvErSe. Doing small brain things again

001100010010,
@001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It’s the result of brain damage from Covid.

echo64,

He’s got a really big loan payment to pay in October, everything is about that to keep it going for another year

FaceDeer,
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

He previously said that Twitter was in the red when he bought it. So pretty much everything he's been doing has been clearly aimed at either reducing Twitter's expenses or increasing its revenue. Better to have a smaller company that is profitable than a bigger company that is not profitable.

Whether it's working or not, time will tell. But that's the likely motivation behind most of it.

Eladarling,

Something about this move makes me feel like he was bragging to somebody about how he managed to own a single letter domain, and his conversation ended up somehow here, with him doubling down on what wasn’t even a good joke to begin with.

This is purely speculative, obviously, but it just makes me think it’s him putting his money where his mouth is to save face to someone else (who is likely bemused at best)

fearout, (edited )
@fearout@kbin.social avatar

He’s playing with his new middle age crisis toy. Cars and spaceships got boring.

dojan,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Extorting his advertisers, it seems. It’s hella funny.

danielton,
@danielton@lemmy.world avatar

Because he knows nobody is going to want to buy more ad space on a site that is (or at least was) restricting how many posts users can scroll through.

Rolder,

I can think of two explanations.

  1. He wants to intentionally run Twitter into the ground and destroy it. Probably because people were mean to him on it or something
  2. He’s completely lost his mind and is just being stupid.

Hanlons Razor makes me think it’s 2

elbarto777,

For the first one, just shutting it down would have been enough.

SkaveRat,

Right now he’d have plausible deniability for his debtors

Rolder,

Could be both. He wants to destroy it AND he’s an idiot.

dangblingus,

Saudi Arabia put up 20 billion or so of the 44 he used to purchase twitter. The reason behind this is widely speculated to be Saudi Arabia wanting to destroy twitter because it was instrumental in the Arab Spring uprising.

balder1991,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Corran1138,

    Have you heard of MBS? He’s…something.

    oneofthemladygoats,

    They didn’t put new money into the purchase, they rolled their pre-existing shares over. Dorsey did the same FYI.

    Y’all are giving this idiot waaaay too much credit when it comes to scheming behind the scenes. It was a really poorly thought out pump and dump, nothing more. There’s no big evil master plan; he’s just really that stupid, and rich enough to constantly fail upwards. With Xitter we’re just seeing his xitty ideas in their purest form, without the influence of the handlers he has to manage his bullxit at his other companies.

    Although I have to say, the accidental brilliance of going with branding that’s so phonologically flexible is pretty fantastic, the jokes can write themselves now. But I doubt advertisers are going to appreciate the fact that their interactions on Xitter are colloquially becoming known as xcrements now…

    assassin_aragorn,

    They would’ve had to convince Musk though to take a huge hit to his credibility and ego with this, which I can’t see him agreeing to.

    ZombieZookeeper,

    Someone was dropped on his head as a junior billionaire.

    matthewmercury,

    “Oh, ay, you got yourself a nice, beauty-ful brand over here. You got your followers, you got your eggs. Very nice. It would just be a cryin’ shame if somebody was to

    impersonate it.”

    blackkn1ght,

    So what is stopping the companies from just paying the 9 bucks for the verified status and telling the muskrat to sod off?

    Anomandaris,
    @Anomandaris@kbin.social avatar

    gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.

    Blue checkmark and gold checkmark are different things.

    bappity,
    @bappity@lemmy.world avatar

    LOL

    jacktherippah,

    Man, if you ever have a social media site you need to burn to the ground, Elon’s your guy.

    UnsyllabledQuickies,

    Just a few more failed businesses and in about 50 years he’ll be all set to run for POTUS as the Republican nominee.

    Nobug404,

    He isn’t US born.

    Bdtrngl,

    What a shame he was born in South Africa and isn’t eligible.

    whiskeypickle,
    @whiskeypickle@lemmy.ml avatar

    for some reason, i don’t think that would stop him from trying anyway and then throwing a tantrum for being ineligible.

    orclev,

    I’m not convinced the GOP wouldn’t nominate him, and that the current SCOTUS wouldn’t rule he was eligible to run.

    Mirshe,

    Yeah, I get the feeling that he’d get nominated anyway and the stance would be “well we can’t do the whole election over again, so let them run”.

    mightyfoolish,

    They would probably just yell out something about Obama and then simply declare him the president.

    Edit: Someone already said this 6 hours ago. Even other people see this ridiculous situation as totally possible.

    Saneless,

    “He’s an African American and apparently that was ok once, why not now?”

    sci,

    What if the US annexes SA, would he be eligible?

    angstylittlecatboy,

    why would the US annex SA

    why would the US have the opportunity to annex SA even

    Gork,

    To get access to Lesotho. That fully enclaved country has been protected long enough by South Africa and it’s time to let 🦅 Freedom™ 🇺🇲 ring.

    Next is Luxembourg and Vatican City. Pope better watch out for Uncle Sam.

    Bdtrngl,

    Pope vs uncle Sam celebrity death match style for control of all Catholics. Make it happen people.

    SkaveRat,

    Look, the US has far higher priorities than those small countries

    They really should take on Liechtenstein once and for all

    sci,

    doesnt SA have oil?

    DrQuint,

    I’m sure the Republicans would just come out of the woodwork and ask “Oh, but what about Obama, how come he can run for POTUS then?”. Which is, of course, something I already seen someone ask. Wasn’t even some old person from “different times” or whatever, this person genuinely just had no justifiable reason to be this racist.

    demonsword,
    @demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m not American but I confess I’m relieved that he can’t do that. Just try to imagine someone like him being able to fire nukes.

    xkforce,

    We dont have to imagine given that Trump was president for 4 horrible years.

    demonsword,
    @demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

    Musk strikes me as being potentially even worse than him, though

    elbarto777,

    That’s okay. He can’t be president unless they change the U.S. constitution or something.

    DigitalWebSlinger,

    Rather more realistically, they just have to reinterpret the constitution, a much lower bar.

    thenofootcanman,

    What makes you think he can’t, and won’t, do that?

    eth0slash0,

    He’s not a natural born citizen of the United States of America.

    thenofootcanman,

    Aha yeah I forgot about that weird rule

    elbarto777,

    What makes it weird? What countries allow naturalized citizens run for president? (Genuinely curious)

    Kuosch,

    AFAIK at least France and Germany

    Earthwormjim91,

    The constitution never actually defines what natural born is. So it would be entirely up to SCOTUS. The same SCOTUS that currently has several GOP members being openly bribed for decisions. For shockingly lower amounts than you’d expect.

    Saneless,

    How’s he doing on rapes, domestic violence, and paying for abortions? That’s still a requirement for that party last I checked

    UnsyllabledQuickies,

    Ah, that’s a good point. Well, he’s still got ~50 years to work on those if he hasn’t started yet.

    skellener,
    @skellener@kbin.social avatar

    Enshittification continues….

    Sewer_King,

    Wait, didn’t the gold check marked brands have to pay exorbitant fees for the checkmark? Is that counting towards the $1000 per month or is that deal being replaced with this new one?

    GonzoVeritas,
    @GonzoVeritas@lemmy.world avatar

    The “X” stands for Extortion.

    I’m sure the ego-less CEOs in large corporations will take kindly to being extorted. (/s)

    Jaysyn,
    @Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

    Elon is fishing for suckers.

    DarkGamer,
    @DarkGamer@kbin.social avatar

    Why anyone stays on twitter is beyond me. Musk is turning it into something toxic, akin to parler or truth social, and he's making decisions regarding it like it's his private BBS or a toy to be played with capriciously.

    over_clox,

    What is this “Twitter” you speak of? Is it that dead blue bird?

    saegiru,
    @saegiru@lemmy.world avatar

    Seriously, why is it even a thing anymore? It’s really sad that people are still even using the service. I understand the stories, because a train wreck is hard to turn away from, but why would you still want to be on board the train? Literally no one should be on that hellsite.

    whiskeypickle,
    @whiskeypickle@lemmy.ml avatar

    wtf…musk is an idiot

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