In the past week the mainstream media and U.S. government interests have collectively been in a state of apoplexy as Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter and began announcing changes.
As a result of the management change, there have been some new discoveries about the internal operations of the social media platform that are worth highlighting. [Background Context Here] Additionally, it seems likely that Musk’s focus on the technology side of the operation might soon lead to [¹]interesting discoveries. However, let’s start by reviewing information discovered in the management change.
First, it is important to recognize that Twitter is simply a massive global commenting and information sharing system. Twitter, the platform itself, does not provide any content, all content (comments, pictures, videos, links to articles etc) is provided by the users of the platform. In essence it is a big chat room or commenting system. The main point to remember is that Twitter does not provide any content, the platform simply provides the hosting system for the conversation itself.
♦ “Verification” – Individual accounts on Twitter could request to be ‘verified’ by Twitter to validate their identity as a specific user of the platform. This is the “blue check” process that assigns a blue check badge to the user upon verification.
Apparently, the verification badge morphed into some form of enhanced credibility for the user almost like a tiered social system or class system. The ‘Blue Checks’ considered themselves more important than the average user and that verification system then became something of a status symbol.
Inside the administration system of Twitter, the assignment of the verification badge became a tool for the Twitter admins to elevate some user accounts as more important than others.
However, apparently with the new management in place, it has been discovered that verification badge status was also for sale. For a secret fee, if you knew the right people, you could purchase a verified status. Of course, no one ever knew this before, and it seems very sketchy. [See comment above left]
Knowing that some users purchased their verification status, the apoplexy over Elon Musk deciding to allow any user to verify their status for an $8/month fee, now takes on a new perspective.
In the big picture, those companies who were ideologically aligned with the Biden administration’s larger political efforts will all likely start announcing layoffs soon. There’s a better than reasonable likelihood some companies have deferred layoff announcements in an effort to help the employment stats for the Biden Administration.
Today, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, the senator who gave Joe Biden the vote he needed for the ‘inflation reduction act’ also known as the climate change investment act that will eliminate all oil, coal and natural gas development, pretends to act surprised that Joe Biden will destroy the West Virginia coal mining industry.