It was said that Blue subscribers now get prioritized rankings in conversations
The Business Verification Check Mark on Twitter Blue Revisited after Musk and Calcanis tweeted out: Trump is Not Enforcing the FTC
As part of the new verification system, Twitter will offer gold checks for companies, gray checks for government entities and other organizations, and blue checks for individuals, whether or not they are celebrities. The gold business verification check mark started appearing Monday on the accounts for various companies, such as The New York Times and Taco Bell. Later on Monday, the option to subscribe to Twitter Blue returned to the platform.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted on Sunday. Later that day, Musk engaged with a poll tweeted out by Jason Calcanis, a member of the billionaire’s inner circle, asking how much they would pay to be verified on the platform. A large majority of responders selected the “wouldn’t pay” option.
According to an internal Slack message posted by a Twitter employee and viewed by CNN, Musk has shown little fear of the FTC regulators overseeing the company’s multiple, legally binding consent agreements committing it to maintaining a robust cybersecurity program and producing written privacy impact reports before launching any new products or services, a requirement that could cover Twitter Blue.
Musk has said before an account can receive verification, it will be manually verified, though he has not fully explained how the process would work, but the company did say if a subscriber changes their handle, display name, or photo, they will temporary lose their checkmark until the profile authenticity is confirmed.
The troll activity is happening after Musk bought the company and promised to restore accounts of users who were previously banned from the platform. Musk says he will require the paid subscription in order to limit the company’s content restrictions.
But privately, Musk’s critics have described the billionaire as dismissive of accountability, even in the face of scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission, which publicly warned on Thursday, in a rare forward-looking statement, that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”
Musk pulled the Twitter Blue program for a few weeks and relaunched it yet again in December, with additional steps for reviewing and approving subscribers. Beyond the checkmark, Blue also lets paying users edit a tweet up to 5 times within 30 minutes, create tweets up to 4,000 characters long and post HD videos.
What is the Fed doing in stock market trading? A CNN Business Report on Powell’s Fed Higgs hikes during December Meeting in December
CNN Business had a version of the story. It was before the Bell newsletter. Did you not subscribe? You can sign up right here. The newsletter is available in an audio version, by clicking on the link.
At its meeting in December, what will the Federal Reserve do? Analysts can speculate all they want, but the Fed says they will be using hard data to make their decision.
Key reports on housing, labor and inflation will likely have an outsized effect on the market as investors try to figure out what will happen with interest rates.
What’s happening: Only the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, can move the markets like he did with a few words on Wednesday. “We have a ways to go,” said Powell of the Fed’s current hiking regime meant to fight persistent inflation. “It’s very premature, in my view, to think about or be talking about pausing.”
Powell added an important caveat. The Fed could start to slow the pace of those painful hikes as soon as December. “Our decisions will depend on the totality of incoming data and their implications for the outlook for economic activity and inflation,” Powell said on Wednesday.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html
Premarket Stocks Trading Using the September Employment and CPI Data Releases for the U.S. Department of Labor: A Multi-Million Dollar News Report
The government report is predicted to show 200,000 jobs were created in October, but still a very good number as demand for employment continues to outnumber supply of labor.
It means more inflation. Businesses have to pay higher wages to attract employees and are able to charge more for their goods and services. hourly wage growth will be looked at closely by the Fed. Wages increased by 5% in September.
There is an upside that another jobs report in December will be reported before the Fed meeting. If both reports show a downward trajectory in employment, that could be enough to placate Fed officials, even if the unemployment rate remains historically low.
Core CPI prices, which exclude oil and food, rose 0.6% in September month-over-month, matching August’s pace and coming in well above expectations of a 0.4% increase, not a great sign for the Fed. Analysts think there will be a 0.5% increase in October.
PCE reflects changes in the prices of goods and services purchased by consumers in the United States. The Fed believes the measure is more accurate than CPI because it accounts for a wider range of purchases from a broader range of buyers.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html
Wall-Centric Wall Street: The Wall will Close in a Presmarket Stocks Trading Enforcement System for the First Three Years After the Pandemic
The housing market is one of the first areas to show signs of cooling after the Fed tries to fight inflation.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.95% last week, up from 3.09% just a year ago, and elevated borrowing costs are leading to a decline in demand.
Powell said that the housing market overheated after the Pandemic as demand increased and rates were low. “We do understand that that’s really where a very big effect of our policies is.”
The Bank of England raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point on Thursday, the biggest hike in 33 years, as it attempts to fight soaring inflation.
The recession that followed the 2008 global financial crisis would likely be shorter than the one that followed, according to the Bank of England.
The layoffs violate the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, according to several workers who have filed a class action lawsuit.
The email stated that the company’s offices would be temporarily closed and that access to badges would be suspended.
The WARN Act requires any company with over 100 employees to give 60 days’ written notice if it intends to cut 50 jobs or more at a “single site of employment.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html
Twitter ain’t a blue, but it does: A comedian tries to slander Musk on Twitter with an app that lets you pay to eat doody
The company filing states that all previous members of Twitter’s board, including recently ousted CEO Parag Agrawal and chairman Bret Taylor, are no longer directors “in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.” The filing states that Musk is the only director of micro-blogging site.
In a tweet, the world’s richest man used an expletive to describe his assessment of “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.” He added: “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
Advertisers hit pause: Elon Musk wrote an open letter to advertisers just hours before cementing his acquisition of Twitter, explaining that he didn’t want the platform to become a “free-for-all hellscape.” But that attempt at reassuring the advertising industry, which makes up the vast majority of Twitter’s business, doesn’t appear to be working.
The decision to push back the new feature comes one day after the platform launched an updated version of its iOS app that promises to allow users who pay a monthly subscription fee to get a blue checkmark on their profiles, a feature that CEO Elon Musk has proposed as a way to fight spam on the platform.
Comedian Sarah Silverman used her verified account to troll Musk, copying his profile picture, cover image and name. The SarahKSilverman handle was the most distinguishing factor about a tweets coming her account.
I am a freedom of speech absolutist. and I eat doody for breakfast every day,” Silverman tweeted Saturday. Her account also retweeted posts supporting Democratic candidates.
Silverman’s account was labeled as “temporarily restricted” Sunday, with a warning that “there has been some unusual activity from this account” shown to visitors before clicking through to the profile. The comedian then changed her account back to its usual form, complete with her own name and image.
The blue check mark on the account name was merely a way to confirm identity, according to the actress. You would have a harder time being impersonated by a scammer. That is no longer applicable. Good luck out there! She then answered a follower who asked how the checkmark no longer applies, writing, “[y]ou can buy a blue check mark for $7.99 a month without verifying who you are.”
After changing her profile name to Musk, Bertinelli tweeted and retweeted support for several Democratic candidates and hashtags, including “VoteBlueForDemocracy” and “#VoteBlueIn2022.”
Additionally, Musk said Twitter users will no longer receive warning before being suspended. “This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” he tweeted.
In recent months, Musk has shared conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi, called Democrats the party of “division & hate,” compared Twitter’s former CEO to Joseph Stalin and warned that “the woke mind virus will destroy civilization.”
In the past week alone, one of the world’s most influential social networks has laid off half its workforce; alienated powerful advertisers; blown up key aspects of its product, then repeatedly launched and un-launched other features aimed at compensating for it; and witnessed an exodus of senior executives.
It is a Stunning reversal of fortunes for this company and for Musk in particular, who bought it for $42 billion and then turned it into a platform used by some of the most powerful people on the planet.
Implications of Musk’s Twitter Blue reversal tweet on a service that makes Twitter time, information efficient, and not good
Twitter has updated its list of features for Twitter Blue, saying subscribers paying for the $8-a-month service will now get “prioritized rankings in conversations” and the ability to upload videos up to 60 minutes in length.
Hours after the gray badges launched on Wednesday as a way to help users differentiate legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that had merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk abruptly tweeted that he had “killed” the feature, forcing subordinates to explain the reversal.
The account’s very next tweet, a day and nine hours later, said exactly the opposite: “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts.”
“@elonmusk, from one entrepreneur to another, for when you have your customer service hat on. Mark Cuban said that he spent too much time muting all of the newly purchased checkmark mentions in an attempt to make them useful again.
“Bottom line is that you have a decision to make,” Cuban added. Don’t go crazy with the new social networking service that makes it easier for users to use paid accounts, because onus is on them to make their own decisions. Or bring back Twitter curation. One makes Twitter time and information efficient. The other is not good.
The company is already facing billions in potential fines from the FTC over alleged privacy missteps dating to before Musk’s ownership. The resignations of the company’s privacy officer and security chief could lead to even more legal issues for the company.
Why the “Apple tax” should not be used to bolster the security of the web, Instagram or Twitter: Comment on Musk’s row with Apple
If you purchase on the web it will be $8 per month or $12 per month if you purchase an app, the company charges a 30% commission, but transactions can be made through the App Store.
The price new tiers follow sharp words from Musk leveled at Apple over its so-called “Apple tax,” a longtime pain point for app developers and cause of concern for regulators around the world who have viewed the fee as excessive and financially damaging to Apple’s rivals. Musk has since claimed his row with Apple was resolved following a meeting with the company’s chief executive, Tim Cook at the company’s Cupertino headquarters.
Musk now says there will be three colors for purchase: gold for companies; grey for governments and a blue check for prominent individuals, including celebrities.
The company has long struggled to grow its service the way larger competitors like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have and, even before Musk took over, the company’s advertising business had been far from robust.
After laying off more than 50% of its staff, there are many questions about whether or not the company still has the resources to carry out such a task.
Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security, previously told NPR that “with a reduced workforce it remains to be seen if it will be possible to prevent fraud, impersonation and scam with their new identity verification methodology.” “SCAMmers will be quick to figure out how to overwhelm the identity verification system to get ‘authenticated’ as an entity that they aren’t.”
There is a new explanatory note appended to the blue checks of accounts that were verified before Musk took over. It may or may not be significant.
If a user pays for Blue on top of other factors, it will be taken into account when ordering the reply to a Tweet. Earlier this month, Twitter support said the feature was intended to “lower the visibility of scams, spam and bots,” though some have worried that paying for priority might also give bad actors an easy way to boost their messages.
What is “Notable” in a Social Network? Understanding What’s in Twitter and How to Identify What is Invisible and Unseeable
The new system was supposed to be up and running by the end of November, but Musk said it would be delayed multiple times because of safety concerns.
The new verification categories are intended to address some concerns, but it is not known how a requirement for payment to be verified would affect trust in prominent users.
“All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes ‘notable’ is otherwise too subjective,” Musk tweeted last month. “Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org.”
Is it clear what you get for that monthly subscription? Are you confused by all the different colored check marks? Here’s everything you need to know.
You can make aesthetic changes to your experience with the upgraded service. It’s a good idea to change the appearance of the icon on your phone. For anyone who bookmarks an overwhelming assortment of Tweets, you can now sort through those bookmarked posts and organize them into private folders.
The gold or gray marks on certain accounts may begin to be seen by users. According to Twitter, gold is meant to signal an official account from a business and gray is mainly for government accounts.
What will Blue for Business tell you about Facebook, Twitter, and The Verve? After Musk and Maslow’s announcement on February 3rd, Twitter is hosting a Twitter Blue Badge for Business
Do you ever feel like you still want to be on social media? Anyone wanting something new can mull over the multiple alternative options with WIRED articles that help you get started on Mastodon, discover new servers on Discord, or consider giving LinkedIn a second chance.
A lot hasn’t been shared about the service so far. We don’t know how much Blue for Business will cost, who will be eligible, or how it’ll go about actually verifying that a business controls an account; Twitter’s Esther Crawford didn’t immediately reply to an inquiry over Twitter. The company said in a press release that it will let more businesses subscribe next year. Twitter does warn (in a truly tiny footnote) that Blue for Business’ features may not be available on all platforms and that they “may change periodically.”
The rounded-square profile pictures and affiliate badges started showing up earlier on Monday, which is when some of the features started showing up.
Meta is testing a subscription service which will allow Instagram and Facebook users to pay to get verified, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Instagram Sunday.
If customers want to get the blue Badge, they will need to provide a government ID that matches their profile name and picture. Users must also be above 18 to be eligible.
Meta stated that there will not be changes to accounts that have already been verified. For users who are notable, verification was once done.
“We are evolving the meaning of the blue badge to focus on authenticity so we can expand verification access to more people,” a Meta spokesperson said. We will show the follower count in more places so people can differentiate accounts that share the same name.
On February 3rd, Elon Musk made a big announcement. He said that you would have to be subscribed to the social networking site to get your cut of the ad revenue. We at The Verve were waiting for more information about the program and official support documents so that we could get a better idea on how it would work.
Even if you just look at Facebook, this wouldn’t be the first time that he’s made an announcement with little to no follow-up. He lied about having a moderation council that would vet any major policy changes, and then tried to sell the story again, but with voting instead of a council. He also said that you’d have to be a Twitter Blue subscriber to vote in policy polls, but we can’t tell if the feature exists due to a lack of follow-up policy polls.
This isn’t to say that Blue subscribers haven’t gotten any new features since Musk’s takeover. They can now post 60-minute videos, instead of the 10 minutes they used to be limited to.
CEO and owner Elon Musk has been promising prioritized ranking since November, calling the feature “essential to defeat spam/scam.” However, despite Musk’s attempt to make employees work in hardcore conditions, it hasn’t materialized. The same is true for several of his other promises — in February, he announced that Twitter was starting to share ad revenue with Blue subscribers, something that hasn’t started happening over a month later, and he promised to open source the company’s algorithm on the week of February 27th. He has now said that it will happen on March 31st.
The Twitter Verified Program Was Frightened of Elon Musk and Other People with Grey Checkmarks, and a Time to Stop Worrying
The company also announced on Thursday that it’s started accepting applications from governmental and organizational accounts that want a grey checkmark. Head of state, members of congress, headquarters level, regional-level, and country-level institutional accounts are all eligible for it according to its documentation. (For example, the National Park Service has a grey check, as does the US president.)
However, it’s also hard to ignore that April 1st is April Fools’ Day, the worst holiday, and that a large part of Elon Musk’s personality is being a troll. It’s extremely possible that this announcement, which came from the Twitter Verified account and not Musk’s account, is just an attempt to freak out people with legacy check marks. The media are overrepresented in the pool of legacy verified users, and this is because Musk is not a fan of the media.
It’s possible that the date was chosen as a troll, because Musk likes to work 69 and 410 into almost everything he does. Maybe it will happen, as it just put up a huge banner that states the change at the top of a verified reporter’s timeline.
Now Musk may follow through: “On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks,” the company wrote in a tweet Thursday.
Immediately the program was flooded with users who paid for counterfeit accounts pretending to be users such as former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, LeBron James and Nintendo.
Before being suspended, the impostor Nintendo account tweeted an image of video game character Mario giving the viewer the middle finger. The account claimed that the athlete had requested a trade. The fake Trump account said that the plan of Musk didn’t work.
Can Twitter hide your checkmark? Comments on Paluzzi’s comment on “Analysis of Twitter Blue quotient violation” [Am. J. Phys. Lett. 89, 081917 (2006)]
It’s hard to say whether hiding your checkmark would fully protect you, as you can search for tweets from verified Twitter Blue users. In theory, though, Twitter could also let you opt out of showing up there, too, though Paluzzi’s post doesn’t show any evidence of that.
