Twitter implemented verification to resolve the issue of impersonation, and give users confidence that they were interacting with the public entity they thought they were (likely among other reasons). In that sense, “verified” meant “they are who they claim to be”, which is great for building trust in the platform. (The additional moderation tools provided for verified accounts made them attractive even to relatively minor public entities.)
Musk either deliberately reinterpreted or misunderstood “verified” to mean “they are a legitimate non-bot account”. That _could_ be another useful thing to know about an account, but it’s misaligned from its original purpose. _That’s an easy mistake to make if you don’t understand well the problems around account impersonation_, like if your experience is all in domains other than running a content platform.
From there he envisions promoting messages from “real” accounts, and implicitly sinking messages from bots, scammers, spammers, and trolls — a fair enough conclusion. But when he then anticipates that will be valuable enough to most folks to pay $100/year, he overestimates what most people feel is disposable income, what most people would pay to have a “well-moderated” public forum, how people would feel about being asked to pay for a previously free service, how people feel about supporting him personally (especially at this point in his arc), and how people feel about being treated as “less than” by default.
Between his admitted emotional awareness impairment and the fact that his “market research” was likely limited to asking his echo chamber, it’s not hard to imagine _why_ he’s learning lessons the hard way now.
It can be _true enough_.
Twitter implemented verification to resolve the issue of impersonation, and give users confidence that they were interacting with the public entity they thought they were (likely among other reasons). In that sense, “verified” meant “they are who they claim to be”, which is great for building trust in the platform. (The additional moderation tools provided for verified accounts made them attractive even to relatively minor public entities.)
Musk either deliberately reinterpreted or misunderstood “verified” to mean “they are a legitimate non-bot account”. That _could_ be another useful thing to know about an account, but it’s misaligned from its original purpose. _That’s an easy mistake to make if you don’t understand well the problems around account impersonation_, like if your experience is all in domains other than running a content platform.
From there he envisions promoting messages from “real” accounts, and implicitly sinking messages from bots, scammers, spammers, and trolls — a fair enough conclusion. But when he then anticipates that will be valuable enough to most folks to pay $100/year, he overestimates what most people feel is disposable income, what most people would pay to have a “well-moderated” public forum, how people would feel about being asked to pay for a previously free service, how people feel about supporting him personally (especially at this point in his arc), and how people feel about being treated as “less than” by default.
Between his admitted emotional awareness impairment and the fact that his “market research” was likely limited to asking his echo chamber, it’s not hard to imagine _why_ he’s learning lessons the hard way now.