Incidentally, April 1 is now mostly over and Elmo hasn’t taken away the “legacy” blue checkmarks yet.
Agile lying!
I was very nearly fooled earlier when I saw an announcement that NYC was going to ban Teslas because of the fire hazard. Fortunately, I remembered the day in time.
I’m still waiting for him to step down as CEO of Twitter like he said he would when he put it up for a poll.
OK, I’m lying. I’m not actually waiting.
My understanding from digging further is that someone at Twitter has responded that "Twitter is ‘actively working’ to get the money to the NGOs.” This could only have been based on someone seeing Schiffer’s tweets, since actual media queries to the Twitter press office return poop emojis.
The unwritten subtext being that “we didn’t expect this theft of charitable donations to become public knowledge”. This also does not portend well for Schiffer’s future on Twitter. Though it’s still not clear that Elmo will actually follow through. Agile embezzlement!
Soliciting for charitable organizations and then fraudulently keeping the donations is at least three or four different felonies. If there’s any scrap of evidence this was done knowingly and deliberately, someone is gonna get hammered.
Agile wire fraud!
Maybe they can prove it was incompetence. It fell through the cracks because they fired the people who were supposed to make sure it happened.
It is now April 2 and Elmo is backing down from his threat to delete legacy checkmarks because the powers that be called his bluff and refused to pay him.
However, if you said you wouldn’t pay him, he IS deleting your checkmark, because something something WOKE MIND VIRUS.
How much does it actually matter? Don’t your subscribers already know who the “real” NYTimes account is, as you’re subscribed to the feed? I don’t use Twitter enough to even notice if someone has a check or not next to their name, but if something seems “off” about a Tweet, I’d investigate.
You’d investigate, but not everybody would. I got suckered by a sarcastic Catturd2 tweet above. It happens even to people who smart, handsome, and with a killer singing voice. Beep
While the Eli Lilly stock collapse based on the insulin tweet was largely incorrect (the collapse started before the tweet), I can imagine things like that happening.
Sometimes people just react.
But since we know “verifying” is done by taking money out of your pockets and nothing else, what’s to stop others from creating “verified” account and putting out bullshit? Does an average reader notice if the New York Times account has a $1000/mo gold medallion or whatever next to it vs a blue, and much less expensive, “verified” checkmark by some ne’er-do-well? I mean, they’re “verified,” right, so much be true?
I don’t know. That’s part of what makes Musk’s action so bizarre. What keeps the National Enquirer (or Fox News or OAN or whatever) from making a New York Times parody account and pay the $1000 a month? Nothing now. And it is inevitable I think that some bad actors do in fact use this to their advantage. All the more reason for people to abandon Twitter I think.
The only thing that might prevent it is the NYT suing for trademark or brand infringement, but that has nothing to do with Elmo or his stupid “verification” mark, which verifies nothing. The term is simply a holdover from when Twitter was a legitimate business and actually verified well-known posters to prevent impostors. The only thing a check mark “verifies” any more is that the individual or organization has more money than brains.
I don’t think the world needs more social media, but if they can help crush Twitter, then all the better.
Is this not a pretty straightforward criminal case at this point? They stole money intended for charities, and only when caught, they come up with a plan to actually pay them…
You would think so. But the rule in the a late stage capitalist dystopia is you only break the law if you steal from the rich, not from stealing from wage slaves.
It’s not that bizarre. The Times hurt Elmo’s fee-fees by not giving him money, so he’s lashing out like the man-child he is.
Well, the arbitrary back and forth on rules, rescinding, partial enforcement and the like are likely to get a pass as ‘confusion’ in American courts, but wow, I don’t think they’ll play well with Europe who is already giving Muskrat the stink-eye.
Apparently, Elmo just found out that in order to strip legacy users of their checkmarks, they’d have to do each one by hand because there’s no automated way to manage it.
So instead he’s having Twitter hide who did and didn’t pay for one.
Let me guess: those who would have been responsible for creating such a thing had been fired.