The problem I had with twitter was the check was supposed to mean one thing and one thing only: that the person was who he or she claimed to be.
What twitter starting doing was removing blue checks from people who were causing problems for the platform (but not behaving bad enough to kick off). This made no sense because people still needed to know if a person was who he claimed to be (e.g., Milo Yiannopoulos) even if the person was controversial or problematic or just plain nasty.
Blue Checks weren't "gutted". Now they just mean something else -- you're a premium subscriber.
This is absolutely correct—I remember quite clearly how it all went down. When Twitter first rolled out verification, it was supposed to ensure that the person you were following or interacting with was the person they claimed to be.
This was also because there were so many people setting up fake accounts using real celebs. The most famous of which was probably the Dave Chapelle, Kat Williams story that Chapelle tells where a fake Chapelle account was feuding with a fake Kat Williams account.
I use the word "gutted" to refer to the level of trust in the old system that was abandoned in the identical-looking new system.
The correct way to have rolled that out would have been a brand new icon, but they wanted to cash in on the reputation of the old system. "Now you can pay for this once-coveted badge!"
The problem is that X (formerly Twitter) is still calling blue checks "verified". Even though nothing about the account is verified. It's deliberately misleading.
What twitter starting doing was removing blue checks from people who were causing problems for the platform (but not behaving bad enough to kick off). This made no sense because people still needed to know if a person was who he claimed to be (e.g., Milo Yiannopoulos) even if the person was controversial or problematic or just plain nasty.
Blue Checks weren't "gutted". Now they just mean something else -- you're a premium subscriber.