To protect those users, Twitter offered a verification scheme for "notable people" who were likely to face impersonation. The verification system was never very good - I successfully lobbied them to improve it a little when I was being impersonated on Twitter (I got them to stop insisting that users *fax* them a scan of their ID, or, more realistically, to send them ID via a random, insecure email-to-fax gateway). But it did the job reasonably well.

13/

Predictably, though, the verification scheme also became something of a (weird and unimportant) status-symbol, allowing a certain kind of culture warrior to peddle grievances about how only "lamestream media libs" were getting blue ticks, while brave Pizzagaters and 4chan refugees were denied this important recognition.

14/

Musk's plan to sell blue ticks leaned heavily into these grievances. He promised to "democratize" verification, for $8/month (or, for businesses, many thousands of dollars per month). Users who didn't buy blue ticks would have their content demoted and hidden from their own followers. Users who paid for blue ticks would have their content jammed into everyone's feeds, irrespective of whether Twitter's own content recommendation algorithms predicted those users would enjoy it.

15/

Best of all, Twitter wouldn't do much verifying - you could give Twitter $8, claim to be anyone at all, and chances are, you would be able to assume any identity you wanted, post any bullshit you wanted, and get priority placement in millions of users' feeds.

This was a massive gift to scammers, trolls and disinformation peddlers. For $8, you could pretend to be a celebrity in order to endorse a stock swindle, shitcoin hustle, or identity theft scheme.

16/

You could post market-moving disinformation from official-looking corporate accounts. You could pose as a campaigning politician or a reporter and post reputation-destroying nonsense.

This is where the EU comes in. In 2024, the EU enacted a pair of big, muscular Big Tech antitrust laws, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

17/

These are complex pieces of legislation, and I don't like everything in them, but some parts of them are *amazing*: bold and imaginative breaks from the dismal history of ineffective or counterproductive tech regulation.

Under the DSA, the EU has fined Twitter about $140m for exposing users to scams via this blue tick giant teddybear wheeze (much of that sum is punitive, because Twitter flagrantly obstructed the Commission's investigations).

18/

The DSA (sensibly) doesn't require user verification, but it *does* expect companies that *tell their users* that some accounts are verified and can be trusted, that they *actually* can be trusted.

I think there's a second DSA claim to be made here, beyond the failure to verify. Musk's plan to sell blue ticks was a disaster: while many, many scammers (and a few trolls) bought blue ticks, no one else did.

19/

The blue tick - which Musk thought of as a valuable status symbol that he could sell - was quickly devalued. "Account with a blue tick" was never all that prestigious, but under Musk, it came to mean "account that pushes scams, gore, disinformation, porn and/or hate."

So Musk did something *very* funny and sweaty. He restored blue ticks to millions of high-follower accounts (including my own).

20/

And despite the fact that Musk had created about a million different kinds of blue ticks that denoted different kinds of organizations and payment schemes, these free blue ticks were indistinguishable from the paid ones.

In other words, Musk set out to trick users into thinking that the most prominent people they followed believed that it was worth spending $8/month on a blue tick. It was an *involuntary* giant teddybear scam.

21/

Every time a prominent user with a free blue tick posts, they help Musk trick regular Twitter users into thinking that these worthless $8/month subscriptions are worth shelling out for.

I think the Commission could run another, equally successful enforcement action against Musk and Twitter over this scam, too.

22/

Trump has been bellyaching nonstop about the DSA and DMA, threatening EU nations and businesses with tariffs and other TACO retribution if they go ahead with DSA/DMA enforcement. Let's hope the EU calls his bluff.

Of course, Musk *could* get out of paying these fines by moving all his businesses out of the EU, which, frankly, would be a major result for Europe.

23/

I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller Enshittification!

Catch me next in #Madison, CT (TONIGHT!); #Hamburg; and #Denver!

Full schedule with dates and links at:

pluralistic.net/tour

24/

Image:
Gage Skidmore (modified)
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CC BY-SA 4.0
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File:Elon Musk (54817684731).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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