Twitter gives drill a spite check

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By Webdesk


The latest speed bump in the rollout of Twitter’s revamped verification policy under new owner Elon Musk is here: tick marks notwithstanding. Twitter erratically assigns unwanted blue verification badges to its most high-profile critics of those same badges.

One recipient is the undisputed king of Weird Twitter, @dril (the hugely popular account of a Los Angeles writer named Paul Dochney(opens in a new tab)).

Another recipient of an unwanted badge is Mashable’s own Matt Binder.

Left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is another recipient of a clear tick.

It’s an enigmatic twist in an absolutely exhausting story. Verification badges or “blue check marks” started dry enough as the icons used in Twitter’s ID verification process, but over time they morphed into status symbols. This divide between the haves and the have-nots became a pet problem for a certain subgroup of users – often critics(opens in a new tab) of the perceived groupthink of Silicon Valley and the mainstream media – and when Elon Musk bought Twitter, one of his stated goals was to close this gap by awarding the badges to those who subscribe to Twitter Blue, the paid version of Twitter which was created not long before Musk bought the company.

In practice, however, this transition was a mess. Musk himself praised the policy with tweets that antagonized his critics and made him feel entitled to their money. “Trash me all day, but it costs $8,” He wrote(opens in a new tab) in November last year. In the months since Twitter put this idea into practice, Twitter Blue subscribers tend to be accounts with relatively few followers, and definitely not the type of high-profile users who need an ID verification process to avoid being impersonated and their followers have potential victims.

ALSO SEE:

Dril and other Twitter power users are starting a campaign to block paid ‘Block the Blue’ ticks

But when Twitter took the extra step earlier this week to revoke the badges of prominent Twitter users, there was a much sharper contrast between Twitter Blue subscribers with their blue badges and prominent, formerly verified users – seen as creators of many of the high-quality content that makes Twitter worth having — with none.

Making this state of affairs all the worse for many longtime users was the fact that the Twitter Blue membership is now associated with Elon Musk fandom. And as Twitter Blue subscribers gain more exposure on the site, blue ticks felt like a swarm of vermin hindering their enjoyment of the platform.

In response, the creator of a defunct app called The Block List created an account called @BlockTheBlue and launched a campaign to marginalize Twitter Blue subscribers by blocking them en masse, ostensibly silencing the sound and causing Twitter returned to its former idyll. The campaign itself may have remained marginal, but it quickly acquired @dril as a prominent advocate and gave the Block the Blue campaign direct access to its 1.7 million followers.

Shortly after the publication of a Mashable article about the campaign on Friday, the @BlockTheBlue account was suspended. Then on Saturday afternoon @dril tweeted a picture of a toilet with a tick in it and used the hashtag #BlockTheBlueChecks(opens in a new tab).

In the midst of the drama surrounding that tweet, @dril suddenly had a blue check next to his name. He responded by repeatedly changing his display name and, of course, joking.

Mashable’s Matt Binder tweeted that he will “no doubt use any method to get rid of his tick”.

Elon Musk has handed out other seemingly involuntary blue ticks, including those to Lebron James, Stephen King, and William Shatner(opens in a new tab). However, this last move is a minor change from this strategy. James, King and Shatner had expressed their disapproval of the new policy and Musk commented on their unexpected badges as if they were gifts(opens in a new tab).

In contrast, this latest crop of spite ticks is an unequivocal attempt to antagonize those who openly criticize Musk and those who pay for Twitter. @dril, for his part, called them “blue guys” and called them “death-eyed idiots who usually try to sell you something stupid and expensive”, but now he’s one. By his own logic, his followers should block him.

Binder called the move(opens in a new tab) Musk’s ‘first funny thing’.





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