Twitter Blue subscribers can now hide their blue checks

stoiclime@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 665 points –
Twitter Blue subscribers can now hide their blue checks
theverge.com
121

twitter blue subscribers can now hide the entire reason they spent money on it in the first place

https://kbin.social/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/281834/Twitter-Blue-subscribers-can-now-hide-their-blue-checks#entry-comment-1290301

this comment has quite a reasonable explanation. Your posts are boosted without you disclosing you paid for it.

Well that sounds terrible. At least with the blue logo you can just hide or block their posts to get to the organic engagement.

yeah, seems like now it will be very difficult to weed them out... just another reason to go away from twitter

Knowing how well Twitter is being maintained, there's likely going to be something left in the code to give Blue people away

And if so, the blocker I have on PC will find them and block them still.

well that explains why whenever i look at a tweet i have to scroll past all the top comments which are inevitably the stupidest ones

Also it let's Elon pretend that more people are subbed than really are. We know he likes to inflate the perception of whose willing to pay for it after he gave out a bunch of free checks to celebrities who refused to sign up

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They're probably tired of the harassment they're getting for paying for it. A lot of the blue check tweets I've seen have a comment section mocking and berating them. I think it's a shame they get to hide it. If they paid for it they should deal with the harassment that goes with it.

I personally think subscribtion model is better than ads so mocking these people seems kinda odd

I agree with this sentiment but I think the real issue with this change is that Twitter Blue subscribers get their content’s visibility boosted. Without the blue checkmark visible, it’s impossible to tell who had their content boosted through organic engagement, and who paid for it

The Twitter Blue subscribers are not getting mocked for paying to remove ads. They are mocked for paying money to have their voices cary more weight. And they are paying that money to a company that as of late has supported CSAM, racism, and vaccine disinformation.

Right. And now, going into an election year where misinformation is growing in weight and volume, we will have no idea who's artificially boosting their content.

Also, it means that every single breaking news tweet, who are you going to see first? All the dick riders who paid for Blue, which slants a very particular demographic's way.

2024 is going to be a nightmare.

What’s the difference between paying to get your tweets seen and paying to get your tweets seen?

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I fucking love how news outlets refuse to acknowledge the new name.

I am all in on only referring to it as Twitter.

I’ve taken to calling it “The service formerly known as Twitter.”

Nah just disrespect the whole sham.

Call it Twitter. Call them tweets.

Nobody calls Facebook "Meta".

People call the company that owns Facebook Meta all the time. Facebook is still called Facebook because they didn't change Facebook to Meta, they changed The Facebook Company to Meta.

Technically Facebook is still called Facebook, it's the parent company (IE who owns everything and who is listed on the stock market) that's now named Meta. However it's a similar situation to Google and the parent company Alphabet, No one calls google or google connected products Alphabet products because it's not meant to be what you refer to it as.

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I personally am not willing to gloss over the stupidity of Musk and fix his mistakes. I am calling it X and Xers just to emphasize how stupid he is.

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So I guess now you can get your tweets pushed without disclosing that you payed for it…?

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They were bullied too much ahahahahahah my goodness

But when you see a reply from a small account with few interactions high up under a popular post, you’re still going to know it’s a paying simp.

It’s like putting a clown nose whilst wearing your nazi uniform. People can still see the uniform, but now they also think you’re a clown.

This is hilarious. Thank God I never made an account on that cesspool.

I was either on my last slide phone or my first smart phone when Twitter came out and Facebook was beginning it's ascent to late 2000s domination.

From the beginning, I thought the concept of effectively posting text messages on this new Twitter thing made no sense at all, so I never bothered making an account.

However many years later, I'm super glad I thought Twitter v1.0 was so silly.

I was head of an IT department at the time and distinctly remember telling everyone in a team meeting that this "micro-blogging" was pointless, going nowhere and we should ignore it. Wrong!

Think the only thing you were wrong about was "going nowhere".
Unfortunately a lot of people like doing pointless things that they should ignore.

You mean you didn’t want to spend 10-20 cents per tweet and per reply to you and from you to share 140 characters a pop to the internet?

Glad I wasn’t the only one.

Shit never made sense to me either.

They can't even be proud of their decision to lick the boot. I'd call them worms but that would be an insult to the worms.

So.. if you can't see if someone is a "legit" (verified) account, why would you pay that fat f@ck for verifiXation?

I assume twitter blue offers other perks, that people might want without the shame of it being publicly known.

Their posts get prioritized in the algorithm iirc

By a vast margin. Replies are apparently unusable as a thing for communication because if you have a checkmark the algorithm ignores any other consideration.

I heard of several people paying for blue to be able to edit tweets and such before Musk bought it.

I thought that making blue check marks purchasable was one of the first things Musk did at Twitter after firing everyone.

I don't know what it was called, but the purchasable blue check marks thing built off of an already existing service. It might have had a different name, I don't remember.

Paying for Twitter Blue wasn't a thing until after Musk bought Twitter

I don't quite see what your average Twitter user needs the information for about whose a paid member and whose not.

I recall reading (forgot where) that someone with the Blue Check-mark has more "weight" when retweeting and responding to tweets. And that the Blue Checks can easily bury anyone without a Blue Check in Twitters algorithm. This was done intentionally by Elon to pressure people into paying.

It's why artists like Adam Ellis blocks anyone with the Blue Check; right-wingers hate him, and they can really fuck up his reach, so he just blocks anyone with the Blue Check-mark who replies/re-tweets his work so they can't even interact with his tweets. And he isn't the only artist that does this.

I mean why would they hide it? The only people who bought it are twats who think they're cool.

You get to keep the premium features even if you hide the blue checkmark.

Never been a Twitter - or "X" - user, but:

Isn't it the whole point to show everyone your blue check mark that you have been approved or something like that? How else would one know that you are the real deal?

That was the original purpose of the checkmark, but Elon took them away from everybody who didn't pay for Blue or corporate verification (and didn't have over a million followers at the time) and started giving them to everybody who paid for Blue and added a phone number.

So now the checkmark just means they are paying for "X." Of course, I'm sure some people are now ashamed that they're paying, so they have the option to hide it now.

Thank you for clarifying.

You're welcome. Unfortunately, I'm still on the former birdsite because of the artists I'm friends with on the platform.

All I ever see is a stream of stupidity from blue checkmarks. Let them wear that badge with shame.

This is freaking hilarious! Even Twitter knows how blue checkmarks are now badges of shame

Should charge extra for the ability to hide them 😆

Isn't having the mark part of the flex?

It also promotes your tweets. So now you can have all your tweets at the top, without people immediately seeing that you are a grifter who paid for it. This isn't going to be abused in a multitude of ways at all.

It’s still pretty obvious. If there’s a random bad take in the middle of a sea of blue check bad takes, you know instantly that person is hiding their check. Otherwise, they wouldn’t get algorithmically pushed up with the other checks.

Imagine using Twitter after everything that's happened

You'd be surprised how many mindful people have a mastodon profile, "in case twitter finally goes down", but they didn't use it to this day...

Bet Elon wanted this because people kept blocking anyone with the blue checkmark, and the people that paid for it kept crying about being blocked.

What's next, a Honda logo to hide the logo on their Tesla?

If you're still on Twitter, you're part of the problem.

Nah, the whole problem is that we don't have any say on the sort of train wreck it's becoming for regular users and the creators that we follow. As much as I could just leave, that doesn't help the people I got there to support to begin with.

What's the problem?

Some people talk of it as if it's a matter of principles. That even remaining as a free user in an unprofitable platform is making it pay off, like Elon Musk wins as long as people stay there, as if it was solely about Elon's pride and not the millions of people who still use it for community or professionally.

Seems like a variant of that generalized disdain that a lot of people have for social media they don't use.

It's one thing to promote the Fediverse, it's another to say that whoever doesn't immediately move over is to blame for everything bad being inflicted on them, which is reductive to say the least.

Seems like a variant of that generalized disdain that a lot of people have for social media they don’t use.

Yeah, it's really annoying to see other people do that. I'm guilty of the same kind of thinking, but I mostly keep it to myself.

Yeah I think the average twitter hater under-estimates how different a well curated twitter feed can be from someone who just randomly follows hundreds if not thousands of random people and they over-estimate how big role Elon plays in it. I don't go check my twitter feed because I want to actively support what ever Musk is doing. I was there already when hardly anyone had heard about him.

If he makes some changes that dramatically affect my user experience then I might consider leaving like I did from reddit after more than 10 years of daily use but so far he havent. My twitter experience is exactly the same as it was 5 years ago.

You'll still be able to identify by them by their bad posts.

when you are too much of a little cunt to own up to the fact that you paid money for that cocksucker.

Now why would they want to do that, seems odd. Wouldnt they want to show they are supporting the free speech (their CEO says this is the case) platform, what would it gain you to hide this badge?

(https://kbin.social/u/countsickness)[countsickness]

So I guess now you can get your tweets pushed without disclosing that you payed for it…?

Again this still feels like they are dishonestly trying to achieve something. Is there another app out there like this that allows this kind of option?

I believe you get some premium features along with the subscribtion which probably is the main reason people are paying for it though I'm sure some just want the blue tick too.

why hide it in this case then, you got your features (some seem to think that being able to push their messages and have them at the top is the one a lot are going for that want to have the blue tick removed) what would be your reason to be like I dont need people to see that.

You get to keep the premium features even if you hide the blue checkmark. There's no downside to it.

Then you are saying there is an upside to it. Why would hiding that your posts are promoted and your comments come first has an upside if you wernt trying to game some system?

So u basically hiding something that u paid to show off in the first place (•_•)

They pay so their bullshit gets boosted and now we can't even see it at a glance anymore. Disinformation in Twitter is going to get real fun.

Hide your shame? Not sure who this appeals to.

I was surprised they didn’t roll this out from the jump, I bet they could have gotten a lot more accounts to do it on the dl. But now everyone is pot committed to blue checks being cringe or not.

You know your paid model is going well when you feel the need to give people the option to hide the fact they’re paying.

Didn't they force some people to have blue checkmark even though they weren't paying? I'd imagine they'd like to hide theirs.

Why the hell would anyone buy twitter blue if they wanted to hide their checks, the stupidity of Elon lmao.

Whats hilarious is none of the news outlets are calling it X. Everyone is still calling it Twitter.

I bet Elon is raging 🤣

I like how Elon X is destroying (t)his company. He does it in the probably most embarassing way possible, ditching his own credibility. Nice!

The only reason I still go to Twitter is to mock people for giving a billionaire a monthly fee to use a free website.

I can't figure out why he wants users to hide it??

What other benefits does Blue have other than the checkmark?

Your posts and replies get prioritized. But if people keep blocking everyone with a blue checkmark, that defeats the purpose of that.

You can still go to any popular tweet, and block every user from the top until the first no-nonsense reply.