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No one answered my question last week, probably in part due to my posting it a full day after the OP's top-level comment, so I thought I'd post it again here. I'm really interested in the answer, if someone could steelman the new blue checkmark strategy and mechanics for me.
I still don't understand, what is the point of the blue checkmark in new Twitter? When I first heard about the $8 charge I thought it'd be a good idea. I thought it'd be a way for anyone to pay $8 for the service Twitter will perform to verify that you are who you say you are. I thought basically, you'd pay the $8, Twitter would assign someone to review your credentials, then you'd get the checkmark. This seemed like an improvement over the previous process because anyone could request a checkmark review as part of an after upon process, and you're also helping to fund the work it will take to do it
Now I see on Twitter's site, it says explicitly:
If the point of verification and checkmarks are to prove that you are who you say you are, and now that verification process and proof no longer will happen, then what's the point? To prove that you have $8 to spend? Are people supposed to believe that accounts that get the new blue checkmark are authentic, when no verification actually happened? It's so confusing.
Please correct me if any aspect of my understanding is incorrect. If the new system really does make sense, I'd be glad and would like to know why. Could anyone steelman it? As it stands it seems just like an attempt to have a one time cash-in on a new mechanism that's going to ultimately destroy the credibility of the blue check system entirely.
Part of the reason that people are careful in answering is because of the elephant in the room. Elon is occasionally does really dumb stuff and people try to explain it with 4D-chess when in fact it is just him being an idiot. To be clear, he is not an idiot in everything, but he is not the smartest person either. My guess that he is slightly above average. The direct order of giving a blue check to anyone with an iPhone and $8 to spare, maybe he didn't think it through.
But my 4D-chess explanation: The reasons to destroy the blue checkmark are multiple. It carries too much power in turning off critical thinking and make bad tweets more notable than they actually are(Eli Lilly incident anyone, it is bullshit with that it raised awareness, campaigns around insulin price has been observed many times before). Also due to the extra blue checkmark functionality verified accounts have their echo chamber with the verified tab without the public able to correct bad takes.
I don't think it's 4d chess, but I also don't think it's necessarily just incompetence, or only his fault. I think someone that high up at a tech company isn't usually that connected to all the exact nuances of all the details all the time. In many ways, it's the job of a director to set a vision, and the job of his reports to disagree and push back when that vision doesn't work. He might have just said to his direct report, "let's make blue checks available to everyone and institute a charge for it, that way everyone can have it." And then his report filters it down the chain through his reports, etc, and there's 1000 separate engineers led by 100 managers who have to be involved because this touches hundreds of ingrained systems, all of them frantically trying to make this decision make sense, each in their own way for how it touches the services they own, and they have to frantically work out new contracts with the services their services touch, so it's like a wave of quick, probably bad, decisions impacting each other. Probably their fear of being on the chopping block if they can't deliver what the new boss says is another motivating factor. So eventually everyone tries to deliver SOMETHING, trying to make this old system make sense in the new edict, and as a result something nonsensical gets delivered.
And that what I've seen in other comments out there that 4D chess used in a disparaging way. Because we don't know how much intent exactly there is of this particular result. Of course it is a speculative way of reasoning of it.
Another way to reason for what happened here is that he is running experiments and don't take predictions on consequences because he believes that managements structure are afraid of change. It needs to play out to see what happens what works and what doesn't. "Elon Musk said Tuesday that he shut down a new verification program on Twitter just hours after it launched, saying the platform would “do lots of dumb things” in the coming months to see what is successful as the company tries to capture much-needed revenue, including potentially offering payment processing on the platform."
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