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

NevermindNoMind@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1125 points – Brands that don’t buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification
theverge.com

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.

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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.

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Bro what is elon doing????

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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!

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

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

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”.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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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.

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...

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.

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He is ensuring his place in history as a seminal business case study.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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".

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.

"He's an African American and apparently that was ok once, why not now?"

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.

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

why would the US annex SA

why would the US have the opportunity to annex SA even

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.

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

They really should take on Liechtenstein once and for all

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Aha yeah I forgot about that weird rule

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

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

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

Wait, wait, wait, lemme get this right.

Problem: They were low or revenue.

Response: Increase API costs

Problem: API costs are too high

Response: People started scrapping Twitter

Problem: People are scrapping the site

Response: Make users sign in to view tweets

Problem: People have to sign in to see any ads too

Response: Tell companies that if they don't spend enough on ads they will lose verification.

I mean, what's next?

Problem: Brands start leaving Twitter

Solution: Increase the price of Twitter Blue

Problem: Decrease of Twitter Blue subscribers

Solution: Sue every other competitor for alleged infringing Twitter's trade secrets

He even sued the attorneys for twitters previous board members because they sold the company to him.

I don't know how that one slipped under the radar.

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wait wait wait, lemmy get this right

The pun was there the whole time!

"The pun is coming from inside the building!"

Problem: ...

Response: Obliterate one of the most established logos and a verb "to tweet"

Problem: My ego still hurts from not getting to use that single letter domain I got 20 years ago.

What's next is Elon standing at a red light holding a piece of cardboard telling you to buy Twitter Blue or he'll key your car

It's called X blue now. Because that's the colour of the... oh.

I wish they were scrapping it, as opposed to scraping it.

Me too, I'll say it was wishful thinking and not a typo by me at all.

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Imagine losing your arbitrary blue check mark because you didn't buy enough ads on a platform that no one really uses anyway.

this is the gold checkmark for brands, not the Twitter Blue sub checkmark

There's a gold checkmark too? Lol

Huh? TIL!

I just had a a quick check and @CocacCola has a gold star but @CocaColaAU does not.

Sony and Uber do, Colgate and Purina do not.

If large multinationals with effectively limitless marketing budgets can't be brothered ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Isnt it used by 350 million plus people?

Ironically, Musk also wanted us to believe that 50% of those were bots just a couple months ago...

This look more and more like a speedrun on how to bring down a well established platform in under a year.

Getting low on popcorn...

Have you tried demanding $1000 of popcorn or you'll stop eating?

I have not. Given the likelihood of getting what I'm asking for, might be a means of losing weight.

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So Elon is now going for the severed horse head under the bedsheets approach to persuade advertisers?

That's a bold move.

Is bold the word we’re looking for here? It’s definitely A move.

I think it's more along the lines of the "it's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for 'em" sentiment

Imagine what this must look like on the inside.

You're a software engineer at Twitter. You keep getting these weird tasks that you know are stupid, but you keep doing them just to see where the hell this bullshit will end up.

And you haven't already quit because you're on an H1B/GC visa, and so your residence in the US is tied to your employment, effectively making you a corporate owned slave.

TIL people deported their slaves when they were unruly.

Imagine being the person who last Sunday night got the call from Elon "I really like this random X logo. Redo the entire site right now and remove all of the birds and blue theming, and have it live in production by tomorrow morning."

This is how distopias happen. Hell this is how fascism sneaks up on people if they aren't paying close attention.

At that point you’re not even going to try to explain it to your boss any more. Just watching the whole thing burn might be more entertaining than trying to save it from certain destruction.

If I were a business that is under threat of this, my response would be "ok.". No business that actually cares about its image should promote on a website that's filled to the brim with bigots and nazis

Every day I think the dumpster fire can't get any bigger and every day I'm proven wrong.

That'll bring your advertisers back

The "X" stands for Extortion.

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

“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.”

All legitimate companies have already left twitler

How to shut down a well established business under an year.

Sounds like a great book title. Elon should try it out while the embers are still smoldering.

Sooo... blackmail/coercion then...?

"Be a shame if you lost control of your brand on my platform, be a damn shame..."

Risky? More like suicidal. The Twitter brand hasn't so much been tarnished as blown to pieces by Elon Musk. If he thinks he's in a position to make demands of advertisers, when advertisers are already in life rafts heading for the shoreline, well, good luck with that. Have that band you're not paying play you off, because you're going down with the ship, and the advertisers aren't going with you.

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

Just shut it down already

No. I love watching train wrecks and dumpster fires.

I feel for the creators still trying to figure out where to go, but this situation is funny as hell.

Like when people said Elon Musk renamed the platform after his divorcees

Twitter (ahem) "X" lost half its advertisers already. I don't think the site has the leverage to make such demands. If anything, it's going to push advertisers into the welcoming robot arms of Mark III Zuckerberg and Threads.

What's he Musking up again?

Demanding $1000 a month from bands is kinda dumb.

I like Musking as a verb.

Musking: being a billionaire and therefore believing everything you do is genius while simultaneously ruining everything you touch. Buying your way into brands and calling yourself the founder.

Occasionally someone "Musking" might also call people they don't like a pedophile.

Musk need to ease up on the crazy.

If Lemmy keeps growing this fast more servers will start to struggle.

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.

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

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

Blue checkmark and gold checkmark are different things.

I heard that Twitter originally added verification because they were getting sued over imposters, so they added verification to delegitimize imposters and thus give less reason for others to sue them.

Now Musk is getting rid of verification en masse, so the original reason for the lawsuits will return.

Here's how to play it if you're a business who loses your Twitter verification:

  1. Allow yourself to lose verification.
  2. Make a backroom deal with some random person, have that person make a fake account for your business and buy verification. Have the person post some bad things under their fake and verified account.
  3. Sue Twitter since they have verified the fake account and removed verification of the real account, and are thus committing libel.

Step 2 is illegal and not realistic. But honestly someone will prob do that for big brands anyway so same logic applies anyway

As if large businesses care about what is legal. They only care if they can't get away with it and if the costs for fines etc. exceed the revenue made by the violation.

But nobody needs to buy the Ads tobact as an imposter, since that was working w.o. verification already.

A desperate ploy to repay the insatiable debt frin the purchase, or genius business move? You decide.

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.

I miss what Twitter used to be

I liked the idea of twitter until the time news outlets started quoting random tweets in their articles.

I remember back in like '08 or '09 the TV in the cafeteria at work was playing CNN and they literally had a camera pointed at a computer monitor scrolling Twitter, discussing what people on Twitter were saying.

That's when I knew journalism was dead.

Twitter is still a thing? Color me surprised. It won’t be much longer.

Also, FUCK Elon Musky

"I just reinstated a pedophile. Now pay me to put your ads on my SHIT" ~Elon "fascists are my best and only friends" Musk

Lol, without his handlers to keep his stupid ideas in check he really is outing himself as an absolute idiot

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

The fuck is this meant to do? Will Elon ever realize that he's not improving Twitter in any way and is only making it worse?

I'm no businessman but this sounds like a good way to make companies move away from your platform.

More than that.

He's dispelling the myth of the billionaire businessman. He could show up quite a lot in all sorts of history books

Controversial idea but maybe federated servers should think of some way of delivering federated advertising. Some way to fund the model in a fair and equitable way while draw away funding that goes into Twitter or other social media platforms. Doesn't stop people blocking it of course.

We do need to think about how to keep the Fediverse running, but advertising shouldn't be federated. If an instance wants to run ads that's fine, but that shouldn't be distributed to any other instances, not even if the posts and users engage with other instances. Who is going to want to see or redistribute ads for a different instance?

Like I said, controversial but it's quite reasonable for the operators of these servers to want to raise money somehow. Even if the activity pub feed describes elements with a "this is an ad" tag and allows the recipient to choose whether to serve it or not.

beehaw has donations and releases regular reports of how its being spent, I think that model is pretty good. from what ive seen they always get more than enough needed.

No please let's just make it not a thing anymore to finance stuff with advertising. I'm happy to support an instance I enjoy spending time on with volunteering service and/or money, but I'm here exactly because I don't want to see ads. I'm right now a happy human, commenting on a post on the internet, without a need in the world and I don't want to see any text, picture or video on my screen that suggests otherwise.

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?

At this point I am ready to start boycotting businesses that are still on that crap platform in the first place.

Brands that don't buy enough X adds you mean