# Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 25, 2022, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442 "2022-04-25T22:50:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/381 "2022-11-03T01:59:39Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > And ironically, it actually does make sense to fix this with a surcharge. It’s a labor and expense problem. Such problems are customarily solved with money. I don’t know what it actually costs. But it would only have to be done once. Assume it takes a $25/hr employee 4 hours to Google your name and run your ID. So collect a one-time charge of $100 and be done with it. Let’s think this through. First, if you pay an employee $25 an hour for 4 hours work and charge the customer $100 for that work, you are not very good at business. That $25 an hour employee costs their employer way more than $25 an hour - first you have the costs of payroll taxes and benefits, which typically double the cost of the hire. Then you have the cost of the infrastructure they use, the cost of desk space and support staff and equipment, the costs of the building they work in and the utilities they consume. Then you have the concept of profit, that you should actually sell something for more than it costs you to make it. So is the real cost $300 per verification? Do you need to charge $500? How much can you charge before everyone is priced out? In your example, each Twitter employee could manually verify 10 whole customers per 40 hour work week. Using your model, Twitter’s going to need tens of thousands of verifiers, at least, to verify millions of accounts in anything approaching a timely manner. And what methodology would you use for verification, other than “whatever we can find in a 4 hour google search”? I’m sure you could google my real name, which isn’t incredibly common, for four hours without finding out anything about me. I share a name with a female golfer that seems to be reasonably well-known in the golf world (and unknown outside of it) and a relatively unknown writer of urban fantasy novels. How are you going to keep me from claiming to be one of them? Or are you going to conclude I don’t exist because I’m a retired person with absolutely no internet profile to speak of. And it might even be trickier to verify the multitudes of people named Jane Smith. I’m not in the tech industry, but I think they generally try to automate this type of procedure, and I’m not sure verifying that random low profile individuals are who they say they are lends itself to algorithmic automation. Anyway, like I said in an earlier post, I suspect the only thing they will verify is your ability to come up with $8 a month, “verified account” will take on a totally different meaning, and we’ll lose the ability to make sure our favorite author or reporter or influencer is really who they say they are. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/382 "2022-11-03T02:09:19Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > I share a name with a female golfer that seems to be reasonably well-known in the golf world (and unknown outside of it) and a relatively unknown writer of urban fantasy novels. At least you’ve got it better than I do. My most Google-able web namesake is an imprisoned armed robber. The runner-up is a professor at an obscure college in an obscure subject. Me? I’m simply un-Google-able under my real name. By dint of diligent effort sustained over decades. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/383 "2022-11-03T02:10:58Z")
The problem that this type of verification is designed to solve is just making sure that scammers can’t say they’re famous person X or brand X and borrow their credibility. It’s not really a concept for regular users. The way it has to work involves the person in question **actually providing evidence themselves** that they are who they say they are. Not Google searches. I’m talking stuff like letting them use the official contact information for a brand or celebrity, and them verifying through that. Contact their official website. Hell, use a public code, saying you’ll say X words in Y speech at Z time. The problem with Musk’s plan is that he seems to want to extend this to everyone, to people who won’t have any official information to verify with. That suggests they’d just use something credit card style verification, to make sure the name match. This is not a very useful service. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/384 "2022-11-03T02:15:27Z")
Yes, if you get banned on twitter for trolling or whatever, you can’t get another blue check. Having skin in the game matters. > [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > And what methodology would you use for verification, other than “whatever we can find in a 4 hour google search” Have you never had to verify your identity online before? Different places use different techniques, but they might adk for a copy of some photo ID, a household bill with your name on it, or even a real cell number for two-factor authentication which can also serve as proof that you are who you say you are. > [@](#): > > I share a name with a female golfer that seems to be reasonably well-known in the golf world (and unknown outside of it) and a relatively unknown writer of urban fantasy novels. How are you going to keep me from claiming to be one of them? Or are you going to conclude I don’t exist because I’m a retired person with absolutely no internet profile to speak of. If you pretend to be her and she complains, you get banned? Or lose your blue check? Doesn’t seem like a hard problem. Lots of people share names bow on Twitter, including blue checks. I’m not seeing the problem. > [@BigT](#): > > And you can’t democratize anything by charging for it when it used to be free. Of course you can. If a luxury airline lounge is only available to the rich and famous but free to get in, making it available to anyone for a nominal fee would democratize it, wouldn’t it? The old Soviet Union had lots of things that were ‘free’, but only available to the nomenklatura. If you weren’t part of that group, you had no access at all, period. After the Soviet Union fell, things like the GUM department store opened to everyone. You had to pay more for goods there, but I think it’s obvious that this was a more ‘democratic’ approach. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/385 "2022-11-03T02:23:32Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yes, if you get banned on twitter for trolling or whatever, you can’t get another blue check. Having skin in the game matters. > > > [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > > > And what methodology would you use for verification, other than “whatever we can find in a 4 hour google search” > > Have you never had to verify your identity online before? Different places use different techniques, but they might adk for a copy of some photo ID, a household bill with your name on it, or even a real cell number for two-factor authentication which can also serve as proof that you are who you say you are. > > > [@](#): > > > > I share a name with a female golfer that seems to be reasonably well-known in the golf world (and unknown outside of it) and a relatively unknown writer of urban fantasy novels. How are you going to keep me from claiming to be one of them? Or are you going to conclude I don’t exist because I’m a retired person with absolutely no internet profile to speak of. > > If you pretend to be her and she complains, you get banned? Or lose your blue check? Doesn’t seem like a hard problem. Lots of people share names bow on Twitter, including blue checks. I’m not seeing the problem. But my point is, it’s meaningless. Sure, I can prove that I’m a person with the legal name Ann Hedonia. But that doesn’t keep me from pretending to be a high level DOJ official with inside information, or a whistleblowing employee at a chemical factory, or whatever identity I feel like creating for myself. Verification of my legal name really doesn’t do much but ensure that I’m not a bot. And if that’s the only goal, OK…but you’ll lose the benefits of the verification system as it currently exists. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/386 "2022-11-03T03:06:21Z")
> **[Twitter exodus: company faces murky future as top managers flee the nest](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/02/twitter-departures-elon-musk-layoffs)** > > In the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, rumors of job cuts swirl and employees report being left in the dark ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/387 "2022-11-03T09:58:52Z")
Who’s gonna pay for this? People who are fine with publicly announcing that they’re Musk toadies (or are totally fine with about half the country thinking they’re Musk toadies). That doesn’t seem like it’s that many people. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/388 "2022-11-03T10:16:21Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > Let’s think this through. > > First, if you pay an employee $25 an hour for 4 hours work and charge the customer $100 for that work, you are not very good at business. That $25 an hour employee costs their employer way more than $25 an hour - first you have the costs of My point here isn’t to discover the ideal price, or to suggest this is the best model, it’s to suggest that _if_ you are going to charge verify-ees for verification, then it makes more sense to align to costs and discover _that_ one-time price point, rather than to panhandle Stephen King for $8 and complain that he won’t pay it. An even more sensible idea would be to understand that verified members are more valued content producers, so it makes sense for readers to bear some of that cost. Blue-checks pay nothing, readers pay (idk) $2 to see blue-check content. Maybe even like 10 cents per tweet, mediated by a frictionless paywall that serves a-la-carte content. This isn’t a new idea, people have been clamoring for major news outlets to offer a-la-cart paid articles for years as opposed to a continuous flat rate for articles they don’t read. Maybe there’s an opportunity there. Of course the most sensible idea of all would be to understand that Twitter’s businesses model depends on free subscribers looking at free content that puts ads in front of their eyeballs. If blue checks get more people reading, then charge advertisers more to place ads around blue-check accounts. If there are no conceivable revenue models where Twitter reliably turns a profit, maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe the best-case scenario for Elmo is to leave Twitter alone, tune it for maximum flattery to himself and himself only, and enjoy being the god-king of a digital public square that is only occasionally profitable. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/389 "2022-11-03T10:53:15Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > Sure, I can prove that I’m a person with the legal name Ann Hedonia. But how do you even do that? Send a copy of your drivers license or something? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/390 "2022-11-03T12:55:51Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > Anyway, like I said in an earlier post, I suspect the only thing they will verify is your ability to come up with $8 a month, “verified account” will take on a totally different meaning, and we’ll lose the ability to make sure our favorite author or reporter or influencer is really who they say they are. Right, and as @Sam_Stone indicated, if you don’t come up with $8 a month, your comments will be buried under spam. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Have you never had to verify your identity online before? Different places use different techniques, but they might adk for a copy of some photo ID, a household bill with your name on it, or even a real cell number for two-factor authentication which can also serve as proof that you are who you say you are. I have done that, and none of them have charged me ~~$20~~ $8 a month before. I could almost see a one time charge to pay an employee for the time it would take to process it, but what costs are incurred on a continuing basis that justifies an ongoing fee? > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If you pretend to be her and she complains, you get banned? Or lose your blue check? Doesn’t seem like a hard problem. Lots of people share names bow on Twitter, including blue checks. I’m not seeing the problem. How do you verify that she is who she says she is? How do you know that I’m not the actual celebrity, and they are the imposter? There may be a lot of Jane Smiths, but there should only be one Jane Smith, winner of the Tour de Golf. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If a luxury airline lounge is only available to the rich and famous but free to get in, making it available to anyone for a nominal fee would democratize it, wouldn’t it? Ah, so does having a blue check get you free drinks? What exactly is the tangible benefit that having a blue check gives you? This is more like saying that those pilots up at the front of the plane have the best seats, so we should be able to pay to be able to sit there. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The old Soviet Union had lots of things that were ‘free’, but only available to the nomenklatura. If you weren’t part of that group, you had no access at all, period. After the Soviet Union fell, things like the GUM department store opened to everyone. You had to pay more for goods there, but I think it’s obvious that this was a more ‘democratic’ approach. Ah, so twitter up until now was like the old Soviet Republic, and under Musk, it will be like modern Russia. I get it now. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/391 "2022-11-03T13:17:26Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Who’s gonna pay for this? People who are fine with publicly announcing that they’re Musk toadies (or are totally fine with about half the country thinking they’re Musk toadies). That doesn’t seem like it’s that many people. And making sure that their real name is on their account as they do so. I mean, there is something to be said for verified accounts, as @LSLGuy said, anonymity has not improved social discourse. If everyone had their real verified name attached to the account, people’d probably be a lot more civil. And if they want to make twitter a pay for service, then that’s up to them. I don’t think it’s a good business model, but it might work, and I’m not the one on the hook for $44 billion dollars. I can also see a free version, with a paid for version that doesn’t have ads and maybe gives some other features. But verification should not be one of those features. Verification is a benefit to the platform, ensuring that people are who they say they are and holding them accountable for their actions. It is not a benefit to the user. As I said, most people wouldn’t want their real name associated with their account, much less pay to doxx themselves. Often times, when the Liberals talk about taxing the rich or otherwise “redistributing the wealth”, they are told by Conservatives they are just jealous of their success. I now see where the projection for that accusation comes from. Some people without a blue check are jealous of those who have worked hard to be notable enough to get one, and even though they wouldn’t know what to do with it, they want one, too. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/392 "2022-11-03T13:59:05Z")
Under Musk’s ownership, Twitter doesn’t have to be a business. It just has to be an affordable vanity project. As well, even if Twitter loses money, as long as the political chaos it creates ensures government of, by, and for the robber baron classes, he’ll come out ahead overall. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/393 "2022-11-03T14:14:54Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > As well, even if Twitter loses money, as long as the political chaos it creates ensures government of, by, and for the robber baron classes, he’ll come out ahead overall. Sure, twitter goes belly up tomorrow and all the banks and investors demand their money back, what’s the put Musk at, like $170 billion or so? I see it more like, say one of the people who are always in ATMB arguing rulings with the mods wins the next powerball, and decided to buy up the SDMB. Then they can institute the rules that _they_ want. Maybe these rules will be good for the board and it will flourish under their leadership, but I’d say it would be more likely to become, as you say, their personal vanity project, one that the current board members may not want to be a part of. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/394 "2022-11-03T14:26:16Z")
> one that the current board members may not want to be a part of. Hence, I’ve closed my Twitter account. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/395 "2022-11-03T14:35:35Z")
I’d do so, but I’d have to dig out my old laptop to find out what my login and password is. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/396 "2022-11-03T14:36:11Z")
That’s what I had to do yesterday. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2022, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/397 "2022-11-04T14:40:07Z")
This is going _so_ well: > ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/398 "2022-11-04T14:41:59Z")
There’s also a [lawsuit being filed](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/04/twitter-sued-by-employees-after-mass-layoffs-begin.html) against Twitter for the mass layoffs without the sixty-day notice required by the WARN Act. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2022, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/399 "2022-11-04T14:48:31Z")
By the way, the check mark is no longer for verification. You just have to buy it. This means, verification is no longer verification. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2022, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/400 "2022-11-04T14:48:57Z")
I love it. Companies freely choosing where to put their ads is destroying free speech. This “cancel culture” meme has gotten so out of hand I think Musk and others actually believe it now. That telling companies you won’t due business with them if they support certain voices is somehow an affront on free speech rather than a _demonstration of_ freedom of association (and how your free speech might affect my freedom of association). Musk seems to believe that free speech means you can say whatever you want and I just have to not only shut up and listen to you but actively give my money to you. Fuck that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=21)