Brian Merchant: Elon Musk broke what made Twitter great. It's going to cost him — and us
Twitter once aspired to be the town square of the internet. Today, it's more like wandering through a third-tier business convention. You can still have some interesting conversations — as long as you can tune out the drone of the bad keynote speakers and the shouts of the vendors hawking their wares.
Things have been trending in this direction since Elon Musk took over the platform in October, but it's clearer what Twitter has become in the wake of the Great Blue Check-opalypse of 2023.
Yes, last week, on 4/20 (haha?), Musk made good on his promise to pull the blue verification badge conferred on scientists, celebrities, journalists, athletes and other legacy "accounts of public interest" whose owners declined to pay a monthly $8 fee.
Those who pay to be verified — a status that no longer involves any actual verification — have now been guaranteed preference and increased reach over those who do not; their replies automatically jump the line. Organizations seeking verification to, say, deter scammers,
