Twitter's treatment of "blue check" verification and what it means–including Elon Musk removing the New York Times' check after it publicly refused to pay for it–makes sense if you imagine it's all part of a considered strategy to completely devalue the blue check and turn it into a simple product feature indicating paid customers. But even in that case, they've ruined it completely. Lulu Cheng Meservey writes that Twitter Blue is now a "decent product" but that it's become a symbol of its own inept management and marketing and must be killed without mercy.
While the legacy blue checkmark was positioned as a luxury good, the new Twitter Blue became marketed like an inferior good. Twitter's messaging antagonized and humiliated influential users, made the product feel like it was made for arriviste social climbers instead of respected power users, and framed it as a cheap imitation of an old status symbol rather than a fresh offering with useful benefits.
The rest of the analysis is very interesting, not least because it avoids getting snarled up in the obvious political and ideological stuff everyone already understands. "Kill the checkmark" is the TL;DR of Merservey's list of solutions, which are otherwise things Twitter's current management are plainly incapable of doing such as "consistently deliver on promises to build customer trust. "
Something about Twitter Blue reminds me of Elon Musk's habit of posting old memes he doesn't understand. It's the opposite of IYKYK: he doesn't know that he doesn't know.
