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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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I didn't say I think it will necessarily work, I was just laying out my best guess as to theory. The specific theory:

General use case:

  1. Verification is easy to get, so people get used to seeing bluechecks next to @joespizzastamfordct, @marietoplessnerd, etc.

  2. !!@! Elon Musk Cr1pt0 Giveaway !!@! doesn't have a bluecheck.

  3. People more likely to spot the scam due to lack of a bluecheck.

This is a plausible use case and hardly unprecedented. Companies with real money on the line (read: financial institutions who take losses for scams their customers fall for) put significant effort into educating customers to distinguish between real calls and scams.

In the replies use case:

  1. Elon Musk tweets "journalists often lie".

  2. 5,000 people reply including Jason Calcanis, Kanye West, Taylor Lorenz, Aella and the real Mike's Computer Repair of Talahassee are at the top since they are verified.

  3. Regular guy decides to read the replies and actively scrolldown to even see the crypto scammer.

I have no idea if this will work, but there are clear mechanisms by which it can work.

Of course, I also think it's plausible that Musk is doing it merely to inflate away the value of journalist's favorite status symbol. Now Taylor Lorenz is no more special than Mike's Computer Repair of Talahassee.

Yeah, but the median twitter user, even the median twitter user with 50k followers, aren't gonna spend $8/month for the checkmark (although if they did, twitter would get a new massive revenue stream), so it won't have that effect

Regular people don't have to spend $8/month for either of my mechanisms work.

The closest thing to "regular people" who get a bluecheck in my example is @joespizzastamfordct. Those sorts of people absolutely do pay for similar things on other social media: WhatsApp business accounts, linkedin pro, google map's "not the closest or best but they paid us so they get to the top" search results, yelp for business.

even the median twitter user with 50k followers

Is someone really going to impersonate @joespizzastamfordct? Is that enough for joe to pay 100/month? And a lot of accounts with 10k+ followers are people like crypto or music 'influencers', or just guys who like shitposting. There's no way >20% of twitter accounts with 10k+ followers will buy the blue checkmark - which means that it'll not be effective in reducing spam.

Is someone really going to impersonate @joespizzastamfordct? Is that enough for joe to pay 100/month?

It's $8/month. And the answer is yes, that's pocket change for @marietherealtor - she regularly spends 10x that on things like donuts + paper fliers + balloons for an open house. It's quite cheap if you put it into the category of marketing/reputation spend.

Assuming the average person reading replies scrolls down a full screen, you need between 3 and 7 people who replied to ElonMusk/ye/etc to be verified and spam is pushed down.

But hey, probably you have a better grasp on stopping scams than Elon Musk (early Paypal) and David Sacks (early Paypal). At least one person in this conversation is also experienced in stopping organized crime from doing scams online (albeit not at the same scale) - is that person you?

Here's an example of how 8/mo verified accounts won't stop spam replies to people like Musk: https://twitter.com/ArmisteadMaupin/status/1589022522175111170 this is currently the top reply to a 6h old elon musk tweet. It's a sexy girl spam link (link to archive, nsfw), and is posted by a hacked verified account. Note that this is an account that was verified before musk's takeover (can they just pay someone to watch elon and vitalik's tweets?). Verified accounts currently appear to sell for $1.5k on some website I didn't look too hard at. So ... in that sense, $8 is clearly a win for spammers! (the scammer probably pays less than the $1.5k upfront per account, if they even do at all vs hacking, so who knows how hard it is to actually get an account ofc).

If you think there's some silver bullet to 100% stop scams, and Musk's failure to find it means the effort is worthless, then you simply don't understand the problem.

The thing about fraud/scams is that the supply curve slopes downwards.

You also didn't even read what Musk wrote about $8/verified account, namely that the verification process still happens. It's not simply "send $8 worth of shitcoins for a bluecheck".

So ... in that sense, $8 is clearly a win for spammers! (the scammer probably pays less than the $1.5k upfront per account, if they even do at all vs hacking, so who knows how hard it is to actually get an account ofc).

So let me illustrate how you've clearly not thought this through. Here's a simple way Musk can use the $8 payment process to verify the account in a manner that is hard for hackers to exploit directly, and also incentivizes them to bother someone else: no CC, you pay via bank transfer authorized by Plaid.

Now in order to get a verified twitter, a scammer also needs to either a) hack plaid b) hack BofA/Chase/etc. In both cases, if successful, there are far more lucrative things the hacker can do with the hack than get a checkmark - transfer money directly from the victim, buy an XBox using Afterpay/Klarna/Affirm (set up auto repayment via bank transfer with plaid) then sell it on eBay, that kind of thing.

Here's a simple way Musk can use the $8 payment process to verify the account in a manner that is hard for hackers to exploit directly, and also incentivizes them to bother someone else: no CC, you pay via bank transfer authorized by Plaid.

I highly, highly doubt that. Musk and twitter seem to be approaching this as a generic way to make money, slapped on top of Twitter Blue, and any friction there will significantly hurt revenue. I'll follow it, and if he does, that'd be my mistake. But I'm pretty sure you'll be able to pay for blue with a credit card.

Even then though, a cracked bank account (via cracking.com) seems to be around $100, which is still much cheaper than $1500, so ... it's not helping! (note: prices seem to vary a lot - some sell verification for $60/$150, others sell for $800-$1500, maybe the former is scamming i dunno)

Even then though, a cracked bank account (via cracking.com) seems to be around $100, which is still much cheaper than $1500, so ..

These aren't cracked. They are empty accounts opened up in the identity of nonexistent or defunct people, typically with negligible history. (If you want an account with a few transactions, that's more expensive.) Best case, you're now verified for spamming as Herman Lopez, a 90 year old guy in Florida currently in assisted living.

(Folks in assisted living are generally the best fake identities; not on a "he's dead" list but also unlikely to notice.)

Anyway, you don't seem to disagree that the cost of spamming has gone up.

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