Elon Musk Says Twitter Blue Subscription, at $8 a Month, Will Feature Blue Checkmark and Cut Ads By Half (twitter.com) 409
Big changes are underway at Twitter. Elon Musk, in a Twitter thread: Twitter's current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month. Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.
You will also get:
- Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam
- Ability to post long video & audio
- Half as many ads
And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us.
You will also get:
- Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam
- Ability to post long video & audio
- Half as many ads
And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us.
Right twice a day (Score:3)
Even an insane out of control broken clock is right some random number of times a day.
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SpaceX is the de-facto leader in space launch services the world over. They have out-engineered all of their competitors, while saving their customers (most of the time, governments) millions in launch expenses while they are at it. They also returned the US to human space fli
Re:Right twice a day (Score:5, Interesting)
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Or through the power of marketing they will position themselves as a premium brand that may not actually be as good as the others but has prestige among people who care more about their image than utility.
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Tesla is like Apple. Products aren't the best, one or two trump card stats, but they are aspirational.
Blackberry of EVs (Score:3)
Re:Right twice a day (Score:5, Informative)
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So off hand, I'd say autonomous driving is nowhere near close to ready for prime time, and I'm appalled at companies willing to KILL PEOPLE to help find the bugs in their technology.
This sounds good in theory but is rubbish in practice. Unless you put your software on the road, how can you know it has reached the level of perfection you intend? What if you knew emphatically that the number of people on motor cycles killed in rear end collisions would have been higher because of distracted / tired / mistaken driving by humans had those miles been driven by FSD been drivin by humans instead? That is the point. Those two deaths are terrible, but are well worth the trade-off of having a sy
Re:Right twice a day (Score:5, Insightful)
There's been a lot more Tesla-caused deaths than that, and you might argue that it's less than some other kind of car but it misses the point that these deaths were caused by Tesla trying to do something unnecessary and stupid. To wit, try to guess at depth with only cameras, when RADAR and LIDAR exist. It doesn't matter how many cameras you have, guessing at depth instead of directly measuring it with a sensor that does that is fucking idiotic, and it was done for literally no reason other than to save money not installing another sensor.
The whole point of it is to make as much money as possible, who cares how many people die because it's a shitty idea.
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Tesla themselves have realized the point you are making; their decision to discontinue LIDAR in favor of just using cameras was a MISTAKE! If the choice was to have redundant methods of measuring di
Re:Right twice a day (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody rear-ending a motorcyclist while using Tesla autopilot is in the same class as an airbag failing to save the life of a driver who smashes their car into a bridge abutment. It happens.
Uh no, no it absolutely is not even vaguely comparable. The autopilot's job is to drive without crashing into things. The airbag's job is to provide some cushion when things have already gone wrong. But more to the point, the autopilot failure kills someone else who would not have died without it, the airbag failure only fails to save your life when you would have died without it. Tesla is in control of the vehicle when autopilot kills someone, SRS is not in control of the vehicle when it fails to save your life. The only way the two things are related is that they are both automotive.
Trying to equate those two things is either spectacularly ignorant (in which case learn something about cars before you try to speak about them) or incredibly disingenuous, in which case fuck you for making excuses for Tesla killing people for money. It is manslaughter at best since they know beyond any reasonable question that they would kill less people with more sensors.
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What if Tesla saves 10 people who otherwise would have died while it kills one person who would have otherwise lived? Greater good. Numbers matter.
I'm sensitive to that argument, and I do find some merit in it. But ultimately you also have to satisfy the argument that making the money numbers matter more than human lives when for another thousand bucks or less in equipment you could have saved those lives and done a better job of self-driving in general is low, if predictable.
Re:Right twice a day (Score:4, Informative)
Reading Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" got me thinking about the trolley problem. She talked about how some Germans and Soviets were given the choice: Kill these innocent people, or have your family killed. It was the trolley problem in real life, a couple of decades before it was formally raised in academic philosophy.
Arendt pointed out that a major feature of totalitarianism was to make life mechanistic: You have this choice or that one. There are no other choices. There is no room for human creativity. No chance for quick thinking in the moment to save both the people on the track and the trolley riders. A world like that, she argued, with no room for human creativity, has to be created with violence.
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Somebody rear-ending a motorcyclist while using Tesla autopilot is in the same class as an airbag failing to save the life of a driver who smashes their car into a bridge abutment. It happens.
Holy fucking wrong answer, Batman.
An airbag failing to save a life is not the same as your airbag jumping out of your car and killing the person in front of you.
This is the fucking problem with this topic. Bad fucking arguments like yours.
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No, it's not. Not even close. The Tesla's involved in these deaths literally, in the truest sense of the word, did not see these motorcycles [cnn.com] (all three of them). Just like Teslas don't see emergency vehicles [cbsnews.com] which have their lights flashing.
it would then be in the same class of accident as airbags that dep
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Musk being the single largest source of misleading statistical interpretations for the safety of the product.
Detractors don't seem to have a single misleading information source, but I've definitely see them engage in intellectually dishonest argumentation as well.
Tesla's tech is cool. The problem with it I see that makes me question it, is Musk. And I think that in general is why the o
Re:Right twice a day (Score:5, Insightful)
"Musk being the single largest source of misleading statistical interpretations for the safety of the product.
Detractors don't seem to have a single misleading information source, but I've definitely see them engage in intellectually dishonest argumentation as well."
The difference is that the topic is Musk. Musk is a pathological liar. Whether or not his "detractors" are dishonest is irrelevant. He is a pathological liar and you're engaging in both-sidesism.
"I think the problem is that there is a lot of intellectually dishonest arguing happening in both directions over this."
No, that's NOT the problem. The problem is that everything that comes from Musk, and his gang of goons, is "intellectually dishonest". The problem in society today is that there are large numbers of people who believe that lying continuously about everything for partisan benefit is a way to win. Musk and his fools are in this group, and those not in that group are not the same.
Re:Right twice a day (Score:5, Interesting)
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Tesla will no longer be the leader in EV by 2024 or sooner, according to numerous industry analysts. Once that happens, what makes them special?
Same damn thing that makes Apple products special.
Never underestimate the sheer financial power of consumer narcissism.
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Yes but EVs are primarily purchased by consumers who care about the environment (or at least care about looking like they do). Musk is currently appealing to a demographic that would rather "roll coal" to "own the libs". Tesla won't stay on top for long with this strategy. When the people who like your product don't like you and the people who like you don't like your product, that's a major business fail.
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A charging network that actually fucking works.
The problem other EVs have is that other EV manufacturers basically ignored the "how do you charge your EV" side and just assume someone else will solve it. A lot of people can't just charge at home - their home infrastructure just doesn't support it. That leaves public chargers, and public charging infrastructure is terrible.
Tesla, on the other hand, has a large network of charging stations. While most other companies stick two or four chargers in a location,
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"That is because people react to Tesla and Elon Musk emotionally, rather than statistically."
Like you, who would tell any lie in defense of Tesla and Musk. Your entire self-worth is predicated on it.
"Take the build qualities as an example. They have the highest sales of EVs and the highest customer satisfaction statistics among automotive manufacturers."
Classic dishonesty. Sales and satisfaction measures are NOT measures of build quality. You simply cannot post with lying.
"Either there are literally mill
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"You realize Teslas have the absolutely best safety rating of every class they compete in"
Ask the driver whose car is struck by the roof that flew off the Tesla in front of him how he feels about Tesla "safety ratings".
Also, OP talked about build quality, something for which Tesla is well known to be worst in class. So you change the subject.
"Tesla is scaling their EV operations far beyond the capacity of any of their competitors as well, so no."
Says nothing about the quality of their vehicles. Which suck
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What matters is they kill LESS people overall than would have died without the tech
That is both true and false. I'm one to defend Tesla's autonomous driving, in general. However, liability is still a big concern. Even if the number of incidents is smaller, it still puts them at risk. And because they're a business making money off the sale of the system in their cars, it puts them at a larger risk than a regular driver. Then, that doesn't even cover the criminal aspect they mentioned. Just because the system is statistically better, doesn't mean they can't be negligent as well.
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You twits use the following reasoning with your elementary school understanding of statistics:
Last year, there were 0 fatalities in a 1958 Corvette. Extrapolating that out, it's safer than a Tesla Model S by an infinite amount.
Of course it isn't. But that's why we don't compare the rates between an unbounded population distribution with a severely
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Even an insane out of control broken clock is right some random number of times a day.
If they run backwards, they're right even more often!
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If he only tweeted when he was right I wouldn't complain so much.
Re:Right twice a day (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, such as - when the brand new owner of Twitter tweets out a conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi, it's not a good look.
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You're not obliged to read his tweets. At least as long as he's tweeting, he's not doing anything else, so if anything, I'd want him to tweet MORE.
Remember: Your right of speech does not entail my obligation to listen. Speak as much as you like. I'll be over there doing something relevant while you're yakking.
Another reason (Score:3)
To not becoming a prolific Twitter user in the modern Musk era.
A used to find some benefit to the service. That benefit has not been erased.
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I never had a twitter. When it came out the length limitation was dumb and made it unusable for me. Then years after it had already been censored to crap I got a burner phone wearing a mask and paying with cash, and connected to the dunkin-donuts wifi with a raspberry pi bought with cash using a cantenna [youtube.com] so I could be parked out of range of cameras. Then I signed up for twitter using tor.
When I got home I used my tor only user account ( firewalled to only access net thru tor - not enough memory to run qube
Remove spam or get ads (Score:5, Insightful)
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If so, it sounds like paying a Certificate Authority (CA) to use a signed certificate so browsers won't refuse to connect to your https website.
Big plus (Score:3)
For $8 a month you can be anyone (Score:2)
Just don't pick one that managed to snatch an @ with their full name like @elonmusk, someone like @grimezsz comes to mind.
Stop charging us to view your ads. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he's doing. The more social media networks move to paid systems, no longer beholden to advertising manipulation, the better. TANSTAAFL and all that, but it just makes for a better overall experience and reduces tons of negative externalities. Bandwidth and datacenter costs are cheaper (to run yourself at least, not paying cloud providers) than they've ever been, so once you hit scale marginal cost should be covered by subscription fees.
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What are you talking about? Twitter is currently free, so you aren't paying for ads.
Blue Check people got their Blue Checks for free, so they weren't paying for ads.
If Musk's plans go thru, you'll be paying to see FEWER ADS.
Who/how do you imagine you've been paying to see Twitter's ads?
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Stop charging us to view ads. If your ads aren't covering the bills, find another revenue source, and remove the ads, because the ads weren't covering the bills. Focus on revenue streams that can pay the bills, not revenue streams that can't pay the bills.
Maybe lighten up a tad and focus on the fact that the man has been at the helm for less than a week?
He already cut executive payroll costs considerably. Give the engineers another week to look over the code, and he might find $8/month is more than enough to cover whomever might be left.
And remember what Twitter is when speaking about revenue streams. Their main product to sell before was consumer data. I'd say money is certainly a step in the right moral direction.
Put it this way. Elon just took over
Re:Stop charging us to view your ads. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even if you can't get uBlock origin to work (one more reason to use Firefox on mobile), you could always just not use Twitter.
I guess you could also do both. Yeah, that actually sounds pretty good.
If you must look at stuff all day, there's always counter social [counter.social]. It's just as stupid, but does away with "likes", which seems healthier somehow. Like how you feel good about yourself for making the choice not to supersize...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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No.
Blue Check Users were previously verified for free, and given at the discretion of Twitter staff. With this "pay for Blue Check" users will be verified (by their payment method) and presumably anyone can be "verified".
The mistake you make is thinking that a blue check meant something more than it actually did - it simply confirmed that the user named "Al Franken" is actually Al Franken, and that was about it.
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The mistake you make is thinking that a blue check meant something more than it actually did - it simply confirmed that the user named "Al Franken" is actually Al Franken, and that was about it.
Well, no. You'd think that's about it, but it wasn't.
It also gave access to additional filtering features (mainly because verified accounts tended to be accounts of famous people who had a lot of people mentioning them) and verified accounts would be promoted in search results and in replies shown on a tweet. (Replies aren't shown by time, they're sorted algorithmically, with verified accounts more likely to show up at the top.)
Yes, it was originally supposed to show that a given account was, in fact, who t
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No.
Blue Check Users were previously verified for free, and given at the discretion of Twitter staff. With this "pay for Blue Check" users will be verified (by their payment method) and presumably anyone can be "verified".
The mistake you make is thinking that a blue check meant something more than it actually did - it simply confirmed that the user named "Al Franken" is actually Al Franken, and that was about it.
Exactly and if you didn't fill a certain category of user, then it was essentially "its not worth our time trying to verify you". The average user will unlikely see a change in behaviour.
People like things for free, but forget there is a point the VC money dries up and that businesses need to make money or shut down. I am sure there are plenty of people crying about the actions here, but aren't the target audience for these charges.
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We should sign our posts with a public key on a federated network of micro blogging servers. Instead of using this walled garden bullshit of Web 2.0.
I really like the idea, but (Score:2)
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Does everyone need a blue check? You're paying for the blue check, not access to Twitter.
My cable provider offers premium services, should HBO be cheaper for poor people?
The $8/mo will be set depending on local economy (think national, not local), as noted in the summary.
Do people want this? (Score:2)
Re:Do people want this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fewer ads for a subscription means you're restricting your offering to people dumb enough to not block them, which is a good way to identify suckers who might be willing to pay for a blue checkmark.
All selling the checkmark to everyone will accomplish is devaluing the checkmark, because right now it's attached only to people who the easily led might give a shit about. Once they notice that even normal people can get it, they will stop paying it any attention.
Elon wanted us all to believe that Twitter was somehow uniquely overvalued, but the biggest secret of internet business is that online advertising is an even bigger scam that other kinds. It has never been worth what it cost, social networks have always lied about targeting ads, and none of these ad-supported businesses should really even exist. And if advertisers understood how badly they are being scammed, they wouldn't. And in all his attempts to somehow get Twitter for cheaper after he agreed to pay too much for it, what a dumbfuck, Elon cracked the lid on that particular pandora's box. Now if he doesn't find a way to monetize twitter that can survive it fully opening before it does so, he's fucked.
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If the blue checkmark gets devalued because people pay for it, then I am sure that they can add a "gold checkmark", or something, for people who want to stand out from the common folk. Its like the 0.1%ers who don't want to get confused for the 1%ers, so change how and where they spend their money.
Why bother getting the blue mark? (Score:2)
Now if anything happens on your account that upsets the twitterworld, you can just say it wasn't you.
YES to offering fee-based services (Score:2)
Ad-based services are great for being introduced to something you might be thinking about wanting to use regularly, but they are terrible once you've decided to become a regular consumer. Sometimes the ad-based usage has to go on for some time. I used free Gmail for about a year and a half. But once I decided I was in, I was only too happy to pay for the service. I've started to fill up my inbox with substack newsletters now, too, and no doubt there will be a few that I'll upgrade to paid status.
Not only do
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before musk took over (Score:2)
Re:before musk took over (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they actually "destroy" a priceless Van Gogh, or did they just mess up the frame, with the priceless Van Gogh safely stored behind glass?
I think perhaps you were dinged for a) being wrong, and b) calling for violence.
Twitter was probably right for noting your error, and a suspension for calling for a beating would also seem appropriate.
Free speech doesn't mean free from repercussions...
Re:Rhetorical call for violence allowed by Sup. Co (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is that rhetorical calls for violence are constitutionally protected.
Private services do not care about and are not subject to constitutional protections. Twitter is not the government.
Try again.
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Not up to speed on this topic are you? Musk's takeover was in part motivated by bringing Twitter's "free speech" definition more in line with the constitutional definition.
I guarantee you Musk has never read the constitutional definition much less looked up case law relevant to it (where you will actually find the clarification you're talking about). You're looking for carefully thought out nuance where there is none to fight. Don't read more into Musk's tweets than the number of characters he puts out for you.
LOL -- No, they just collude with a political party to help that party attain or retain power.
So does literally every company in the world not stupid enough to attempt to run without having lobbying as a cost centre. Again your post is not relevant.
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i was kicked off twitter because i said a pair of vandals that destroyed a priceless Van Gogh painting should be beaten and put in jail
Perhaps you should have read their policy https://help.twitter.com/en/ru... [twitter.com]
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Last I heard they glued themselves to the wall next to it?
Open up a can of Surströmming [wikipedia.org] just out of reach of them and put on a live cam. The pay-per-view income of them gnawing off their own limb just to get out should pay for the damage.
You are advocating for a violent crime (Score:5, Insightful)
i was kicked off twitter because i said a pair of vandals that destroyed a priceless Van Gogh painting should be beaten and put in jail
1. Beating up people is illegal. It's a violent crime and we don't know what precisely you're advocating for. Are you advocating roughing them up a bit to scare them or hospitalizing them?...giving them brain damage from cranial trauma?....disfiguring them?...Honestly, don't know which, nor do I care. However, if put in charge of moderating content, I'd err on the side of caution. Advocating for extra-judicial violence is a dick move, at best and softcore borderline terrorism at worst. If you're advocating for that, you're not a nice guy.
2. Priceless Van Gogh? Fuck that shit. "Fine art" is just collectibles for the ultra-wealthy and status symbols for the elite...especially from that era. The art scene has been dead for a long time and has only catered to the extremely wealthy for over 100 years. I am skeptical that if you found a painting from another artist that resembled his work you'd treasure it and advocate for violence for people who deface it. I'll wager your love of Van Gogh comes from being told it's a precious, priceless art work.
As far as I'm concerned, a priceless painting, particularly from that era where it has no historical value, is no different than a famous-person's Rolls Royce.
You're definitely welcome to disagree with my contempt for the art world...many do. However, if you're going to advocate for violence, why not save it for something that means something? There are plenty of human beings causing greater harm to society than art vandals.
That said...I don't think you were a victim of injustice because you went on Twitter, violated their TOS advocating for violence, and got kicked off. Are you a threat to society?...I'd wager not. But being kicked off Twitter is like being banned from someone's restaurant...not being arrested. Your rights are very limited. You're using their platform and being a dick when you're using it. They're well within their legal rights, and IMHO ethical rights, to kick you off for being a dick...especially for wishing violent crime on someone. You're not adding new information or a novel perspective to the issue and advocating for violence is just making the experience unpleasant for everyone else.
You're not the good guy in this scenario.
But it is unwelcome at Twitter (Score:3)
Beating up people is illegal.
A rhetorical call for violence is not.
Doesn't matter. If someone gives a rhetorical call for people to commit a crime...most do not like that, including the moderators at Twitter and most of their audience.
It is akin to going into a private establishment, violating their rules, getting kicked out and then whining that what you did is technically not a crime. OK, fine, you won't be prosecuted, but that doesn't mean Twitter needs to let you into their business.
You don't like it? Try somewhere else. It's just like visiting someone's hom
Deleted (Score:2)
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We deleted our accounts. Moving on?
Great you deleted your account, but signal are you sending, beyond either you didn't really use the platform, you don't benefit from being verified or you didn't realise you weren't in the target audience for the fee?
Popcorn. (Score:5, Funny)
This is quite possibly the worst purchase ever. However when he does finish killing off twitter, he may be remembered in the future as the greatest hero of all time, for vanquishing the scourge of Twitter.
Balance (Score:5, Funny)
I am greatly enjoying watching Elon burn $44 Billion.
One of the best comments on the purchase I saw was from Peter Schiff, who said soemthing along the lines of "You overpaid for Twitter, but you bought it selling highly overvalued Tesla stock so it really doesn't matter".
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If Twitter dies, it will be because of the managers he put in place and whatever marching orders he gave them. He's already installed them. I doubt he'll be able to put in time to actively manage the company.
Re:Popcorn. (Score:5, Insightful)
$44 billion was a low price to pay for Elon and the Saudis (and other oligarchs) to gain further control of the minds of the people and therefore the elections of every country. Just look at the power Rupert Murdoch's FOX news has...
Divide the people and the oligarchs are sitting very comfortably...
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Hey, Mark's already busy taking it down, don't be greedy.
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Hey, Mark's already busy taking it down, don't be greedy.
The thing is that Facebook is easy to wound, hard to kill.
Most people have a Facebook account, they may not use it, but it's the defacto way to reliably get in touch with someone on the Internet. And for the people who do use it they only care about friends and family so the network effect is very strong.
But Twitter is different, there's a network effect for the daily users. But the thing that actually made Twitter a major social network is the Press Release. If you're a famous person (so simply someone cau
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Elon burning 44 millsions, Mark putting the Facebook cancer down with the Metastasis...
Life's finally getting better after the 2020 crap.
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It didn't cost him that much. A chunk came from Tesla stock he sold and the rest from other buyers and loans. https://www.aljazeera.com/econ... [aljazeera.com]
You don't stay rich by spending your own cash.
If it didn't have such an outsized impact (Score:3)
"essential to defeat spam/scam" (Score:2)
If Twitter gets turned into a free-for-all, as seems likely - I'd expect many scammers / spammers will be happy to pay $8/month to get unfettered access.
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I expect the average spam account isn't around long enough to earn $8 before being banned.
Half the Ads!!! (Score:2)
I'm off twitter until it works without Javascript. (Score:3)
Regardless of what whizz-bangs Elon rolls out, or what interesting posters and posts might now escape censorship, I'm off Twitter - even reading tweets as a non-subscriber - until I can use it without unblocking its ability to run scripts in my browser.
I never joined as a twitterer, and stopped reading tweets when Twitter disabled "classic mode", requiring javascript to read them.
If Elon wants Twitter to be the public square, he needs to FIRST enable participation using only unscripted HTML. Else he continues to exclude people who want to avoid corporate spyware on their machines.
I'm beginning to thing this Elon Musk fellow... (Score:2)
I have an even better proposal (Score:2)
Doesn't cost anything, subjects you to no ads and best of all, doesn't require you to use Twitter.
LMAO (Score:2)
breakfast (Score:2)
I *still* don't care what you had for breakfast.
What happened? (Score:2)
Sure ... (Score:2)
Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
Because peasants are often rolling in cash. /sarcasm
It's the same system except for a (small) fee rather than other criteria.
Pay for ads? (Score:2)
"You pay to get half as many ads" does not work. If I pay, I want to have an ad-free service, thank you.
seems reasonable (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
Finally someone cares about the peasants; as long as those peasants have $96/year of disposable income to spend for the privilege of a blue checkmark. Sometimes I can't tell if Musk is really an out-of-touch billionaire or a brilliant comedian doing a parody of an out-of-touch billionaire.
Already creating separate classes, nice job. (Score:3)
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I'll advertise there, I like money.
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Elon can suck it, ill never pay for Twitter or advertise there.
You are unlikely the target market. Rather it would be for influencers and anyone else who has a business interest in getting the blue checkmark. These people can make a business case for paying that money and marking it as an expense.
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It has more a Russia 1991 feel. Control is gone and the drunkard is at the helm. Anything goes and the mob rules.