from Hacker News

Verified accounts are now prioritized

by bifftastic on 4/25/23, 5:41 AM with 56 comments

• by blindseer on 4/25/23, 6:36 AM

  This is only going to make it easier people like crypto scammers to boost their activities. Just think about the people that are going to want to pay to have their voices prioritized, and have it be worth it.

  Any influencer that wants to sell you ads, any organization that benefits from you buying into their product, any scammer that can trick you from parting with your money, all those people are going to want to pay for this and will be rewarded for doing so.

  Meanwhile, I struggle to see why the people that generate actual good discourse (imo I guess), the scientists, the engineers, the writers, the thinkers, etc, would ever consider paying for this.

  I'm sure there's a massive bot problem but couldn't that have been dealt in different ways? Getting people to pay to boost their tweets as a value add for the subscription really devalues the platform.

• by danso on 4/25/23, 7:13 AM

  For the most part today I didn’t notice a big change in how replies were ordered because, as it turns out, I interact mostly with my friends and network, who have overwhelmingly rejected joining Twitter Blue, and thus don't (yet) see much competition between bluechecks and non-bluechecks.

  But it’s definitely noticeable when I go into the replies of a general news thread, like yesterday's announcements of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon being fired. The algorithm is very coarse — after prioritizing the thread author's replies, then it's just a free-for-all of bluechecks. Not in chronological order, or by amount of engagement or size of account. Just seemingly random, which is just not enjoyable.

  I can't even see my own replies to a big tweet — previously, your own replies to a tweet would show up at the top of all replies.

• by ZacnyLos on 4/25/23, 6:42 AM

  Here's how verfication works on Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/verification

• by llimos on 4/25/23, 6:15 AM

  The Twitter blue tick is actually much more visually distinguishable than Google's tiny "Ad" label in search results.

• by lynx23 on 4/25/23, 6:43 AM

  Is Twitter really still a thing? Amazing how long it takes for "established" internet services to die.

• by asdfman123 on 4/25/23, 6:16 AM

  I’m not paying you in order to generate content for you, sorry. Good luck with your dwindling base of people who are willing to pay for an all round worse experience.

  Do as @dril suggests and block verified users.

• by KingOfCoders on 4/25/23, 6:35 AM

  (Disclaimer: User since 2008, paying since 2023)

  Please drop the "Verified" wording. Just call it pro for everyone who pays like every other Saas (reminder: Websites are also not verified, and verified SSL failed)

• by p-e-w on 4/25/23, 6:01 AM

  I assume that by "prioritized" he means "ranked higher in the feed".

  If so, this actually makes sense and should improve quality on average. Yes, verification is quite cheap and pretty much anyone can get it so it's not a perfect spam filter, but it's a million times better than letting bots and sockpuppets rampage among people who actually have something to say.

  I strongly believe that the only effective way to control spam and abuse is to control who gets a voice, rather than trying to control what they say. Content-based methods don't work, and neither does banning "bad" accounts, as long as people can just create 10 more sockpuppets afterwards. This is a small, but welcome, step in the right direction.

• by IndySun on 4/25/23, 7:14 AM

  Twitter started with good intent but alas is no different to any public net space. It suffers from the same 'gossip' and 'over the garden fence' mutterings as other comment forums. It's best value lies with users painstakingly sifting for actual worthwhile information from bona fide contributors - and then continuously resisting reading the inevitable junk responses. How it was and still is discussed with serious interest or concern by mature people is an example of the worst aspects of human web nature, and/or how fleece ignorant/uninformed/desperate public.

• by mrb on 4/25/23, 6:21 AM

  The flip side of the coin is that 95%+ of Twitter's user base (every unverified user) is now going to have a worse publishing experience due to less engagement, less visibility of their tweets. Time will tell if prioritizing the consuming experience over the publishing experience is a good business decision.

• by sourcecodeplz on 4/25/23, 7:46 AM

  Elon can be quite the polarizing individual but the hate and pessimism is just too much and frankly down right embarrassing.

• by MattGaiser on 4/25/23, 5:53 AM

  Were they not already?

  Was it not already such that only blue checkmarked accounts would be recommended?

• by LeoPanthera on 4/25/23, 6:10 AM

  It's astounding the correlation between "has blue checkmark", ".eth" in display name, and "supports trump in bio".

  The venn diagram of those three things is nearly a single circle.

• by paxys on 4/25/23, 6:01 AM

  Didn't he announce this like 6 months ago?

• by EZ-E on 4/25/23, 6:26 AM

  Since Twitter doesn’t seem to be able to find out who is human vs who is a bot, I guess a paid subscription was the next best thing. Plus they get paid.