He goes on to say that the old days of Twitter, before verification was introduced, was a “meritocracy”, where likes and retweets ensued to “the best rose to the top.” Then, he says checkmarks “broke the meritocracy with a policy deeming verification only for elite ‘noteworthy’ users.”
“It was doled out to friends of employees without identity verification or noteworthiness, and it was revoked as punishment for speech.” It’s worth noting that a community note has been left on his thread, making it clear that usersdidhave to verify their identity with the old system.
Simply Googling “why was Twitter verification introduced?” will also show that Sweeney has missed out an important part of Twitter’s history. Famously, the checkmark was introduced to protectTwitter, not the celebs, after baseball player Tony La Russa sued the platform over other users impersonating him. Checkmarks made this much more difficult, with users able to differentiate trolls from the figures they were impersonating.
Sweeney is getting ratioed pretty bad for this take, particularly over his argument that Twitter Blue critics are comparable to high school bullies. He did get a reply from Musk himself though, so at least there’s that.
It must be said, however, that Sweeney’s argument has aged pretty poorly. As mentioned before, Musk appears to be dishing out free Twitter Blue checkmarks to figures he wants to keep on the platform. In other words, “dolled out” to the elite.
In any case, the #BlockTheBlue campaign shows no signs of slowing down. It’s still trending on Twitter, causing some large accounts to insist they didn’t pay for Twitter Blue, and had it given to them for free by Musk.
