Is There a Blue Check on Twitter?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The idea that you have this like sort of special privilege class and you can then project, you know, there was a reason why the fixation with Twitter emerges around about 2016 to 18. So he absolutely wants to get rid of like my blue check. He wants toget rid of Taylor Lorenz's blue check. And I think that it all kind of also like sort of accelerated a lot of kind of weird online right wing politics as well?

Paris Marx is joined by Hussein Kesvani to discuss the mess of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, the problem with his solution to blue check privilege, and what we should learn from how he posts.

Hussein Kesvani is a journalist and the co-host of Trashfuture and Ten Thousand Posts. Follow Hussein on Twitter at @hkesvani.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Paris wrote about Elon Musk’s new plan to allow users to pay $8 to get a blue check, priority on their posts, and other features as part of an updated Twitter Blue.
Private texts revealed from the Delaware court showed the rich and powerful groveling to Elon Musk.
A long list of companies have stopped advertising on Twitter after Musk’s takeover. He blamed it on activists.
Roko’s Basilisk brought Elon Musk and Grimes together.
Elon Musk has decreed that people making fun of him by impersonating him on Twitter will be banned.

Support the show