Wow, now I have a mental picture of an unshaven Musk hunched over a keyboard, micromanaging this huge communications hub all by himself.
The only way this “gray check” thing could have been a move in the right direction is if anyone can get one simply by verifying they are who they say they are. Too bad Musk fired all the staff who could be handing that verification process.
Briefly creating it then killing it off, on the other hand, is possibly the stupidest way that could have gone.
Still working for me, at least in German.
Today’s brainfart; link your Twitter to your bank account, step 3 profit.
Jesus, the gray check was A Thing for less than a day?
It’s back for me. I don’t know what was going on.
Well, glad I still have it.
Just in case the idea of authorizing monthly credit card charges from a site that just took a chainsaw to its operations and security staff wasn’t stupid enough…
Oh hey, now it looks like I can log in to my pacemaker from my twitter account and make changes and updates… how convenient that will be.
So, he’s trying to dig the hidden PayPal out of the twitching corpse of Twitter?
Interesting article from a current Twitter engineer who predicts service problems and increasing instability over the coming days and weeks:
But can your pacemaker tweet for you? I expect a twitter feed that just tweets “lub-dub” once every second or so.
Sure, but the problem comes from retweets.
I don’t tweet, but I have (had) a twitter account and follow a very few people. One is Neil Gaiman, and I just got a post from his blog that’s moved to Mastodon. So, I opened an account there and followed him.
One data point anti-twitter/pro-mastodon.
I predict Mastodon will overtake Twitter as the place to post very soon. Maybe a couple months at most, likely sooner. I have no special internal knowledge of either platform. Hell, I never even heard of Mastodon until very recently. It’s just the way these kinds of things go.
I’m following this but not closely. Is this a correct summation of what’s happened in the short time since Musk bought Twitter?:
- He announced that blue checkmarks would cost $20/month
- He lowered the cost to $8/month
- He said that now everyone could get a blue check mark (if they pay for it), it would no longer be limited to elites
- He introduced a grey checkmark, essentially a replacement for the formerly elite blue checkmark
- He said there would be no grey checkmark after all.
Y’know…
People who know me know I’ve been for some time on the side that losing Twitter would leave the world no poorer for it.
Never imagined it would go like this though.
OTOH I’ve never wanted Elon destroyed or neutralized. Humbled, however… yes. As many need to be at some point. So we may yet get that too.
Makes up a little for not having won the PowerBall 
I don’t know exactly what the “official” gray check mark was supposed to signify, but it seemed like the equivalent to the original meaning of the blue check, that some well-known individual really was who they say they are. It was a valuable feature and now Twitter doesn’t even have that. This seems indicative of (a) Musk micromanaging things he knows nothing about, and (b) making really stupid decisions.
When you put it that way, you make it all sound so stupid…
You left out:
- fired half the staff, including staff who managed content to keep advertisers happy.
Sidebar please: what the heck is he wearing?