Twitter’s recent change log is probably longer than this year’s IRS audit. Right now, it’s hard to tell what’s really a systemic change, and that’s a mistake, often as a side effect of some other update. At least right now, Twitter has seemingly removed all of its labels on government and state-affiliated media accounts that prompted NPR and PBS to announce that they’ll stop using the app entirely.

Change Simulator 2023

Now, it seems that Chief Twit Elon Musk has had a change of heart (if that’s even possible), while the same also somewhat applies to actual state media outlets, like Russia Today (RT) and China Xinghua News. Granted, it does sound a bit risky, possibly leading to Twitter being used as a propaganda tool, without the appropriate notifiers of such. Reportedly, however, Musk decided to remove all of these labels because his biographer told him to do so.

So, things are now where they’re at because of that? Wow. As noted, it’s also hard to tell if this is a mistake, because Twitter has also removed its new gold checkmark from a heap of business accounts that it didn’t mean to as part of its legacy blue tick retirement. According to Social Media expert Matt Navarra, Twitter has contacted a range of brand accounts to let them know that their gold tick was removed by mistake and that Twitter is referring to a Google doc to restore the ticks to all eligible accounts.

Twitter’s also looking to add gold checkmarks to all accounts that spend within excess of $1000 on ads each month. Among all of this, it’s also dealing with a fresh round of impersonations, as official comms accounts lose their tick, and other users step in to take their place. In short, it’s all a bit of a mess, and no one knows for sure just what’s happening. Regardless, Musk seems to be enjoying all the chaos.

Musk has repeatedly noted that he was looking forward to retiring legacy blue checkmarks, which he says were allocated via a corrupt and biased system under previous Twitter management. Somehow the blue tick had moved from being a marker of confirmed identity to a status symbol, at least in the eyes of some, and Musk seemed to relish the idea that he could knock down the media establishment by a notch by taking away their perceived elite status.

However, that’s not what the blue checkmark was for – but regardless, Musk seems defiant in his stance that all the ‘elites’ who once had said marks should just pay for it and stop whining, rather than concerning himself with misinterpretations and problems that could be caused by the change.

The Wrap

Is that sustainable? Will that really make Twitter stop losing out? Whatever the case, all of these are part of the broader whirlwind that is ‘Twitter 2.0’, where things don’t always work, and nothing is often as it seems. Regardless of the potential problems any of these could cause, it’s going to be hard for Twitter to get these changes back. The perceptual impacts alone would be significant – although Twitter has left the option open. It’s hard to say how Twitter would eventually ‘correct’ itself, but we can imagine that those at Twitter HQ have their hands just as full dealing with an escalating range of issues at the moment.

Sources

https://bit.ly/3LrD1fl