Something weird is going on at X (formerly Twitter) and I don’t know how to feel about it. After Elon Musk announced late last month in a Tweet that X would be granting Premium subscriptions to accounts with at least 2500 verified subscriber followers, the service is also reassessing who automatically gets verified blue check marks.
It appears I’m being considered as one of those users and the notifications have left me confused. To understand my conflicting emotions, we need to go back.
Elon Musk’s purchase in 2022, brisk dismantling, and subsequent rebranding of one of the most dominant social media platforms ever was astonishing to witness and gave even the most casual Twitter fan whiplash.
Watching Twitter devolve into X was painful, and losing verification on a service where I generously published thousands of tech-related, newsy, off-the-cuff, and silly thoughts for 15 years gutted me.
A mess made worse
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While I’d never argue that Musk bought a healthy business (a recent read of Battle for the Bird by Kurt Wagner reminded me of just how mismanaged the business was long before Musk carried his sink over the threshold). Even so, Musk’s efforts have intentionally undermined the foundation of what built Twitter into a valuable and trusted real-time, news, info, and entertainment service.
Musk targeted Twitter’s existing blue check and verification system because he believed Twitter handed them out unfairly and, especially, because Musk distrusts the media and felt the voices of mainstream journalists and media companies were unfairly elevated on the platform.
Maybe that was true, but by wiping away all verification checks and then, essentially, putting them up for sale, X and Musk ended up with a legion of random users who wield their blue checks like a cudgel. They had no verified information to share, no news to impart, just an axe to grind, and the blue check helped their voices rise above others, especially once verified sources with access to real news lost their verification and blue checks.
I missed Musk’s tweet about giving some users free Premium accounts and, even if I had, I wouldn’t have assumed I reached the threshold. This morning, however, I saw that my account suddenly had Premium account access. A Premium account (typically $8 / £8 / AU$13 a month) can tweet longer posts and videos, undo posts, edit posts, see fewer ads, and, get boosted visibility for their replies.
See me, hear me
Anyone who has used X in the last 12 months or so will tell you that posting on the platform can feel like shouting in the darkness. No one can see you, few can hear you. The satisfaction I once had of posting and engaging on the platform is long gone.
Suddenly having a Premium account doesn’t change my perspective on a service that can often feel like wading into a raging dumpster fire.
However, just a few tweets below the Premium alert was the notification that my account was being evaluated for a blue check. I hadn’t asked for this (I also never asked for my original blue check that showed up 12 years ago).
Prior to this, if you paid for an account, you automatically got the blue check (pending some identity verification). This would be the first time the X subscription service is separated from the blue check system. There’s no indication that I will get actually get that blue check, but I’ll admit that the possibility of getting it back under this new regime is perplexing. There’s a fundamental part of me that wants it back, and then a rational part that reminds me the place is still a hellscape.
An olive branch
Leaving aside my concern, these changes may be the first sign that even Musk knows he made a mistake, that most current, paying blue checks are just a bunch of angry randos who are undermining X’s overall content quality and safety.
Reinstating “trusted” blue checks could be a signal to fleeing advertisers that X wants to return or at least edge in the direction of trustworthy sources – or at least balancing the boosts some incendiary tweets see from extremists with real news promoted by blue check verified sources.
It‘s no longer clear what qualifies for a check and “verification,” and, as I said, my fate is far from certain. Even if I do get the blue check, then what? I’m certain there are many other formerly verified Twitter users who received the same notice and are now contemplating their next move.
Is this a return to the halcyon days of Twitter past when blue check accounts delivered on the ground news accounts you can trust? Probably not, but I won’t deny that this latest development is intriguing.
Postscript: Shortly after this post published, Mr. Ulanoff’s Blue Check returned. He reportedly still doesn’t know how to feel about it.