On entering the Twitter Schnookiverse

April 20, 2023, will be a big day for many of us on Twitter. It will be the day that Legacy Verified accounts will lose their “Blue Check,” which shows they were a known entity, such as a celebrity or well-known brand or organization, or a recognized media member like myself.

In anticipation of this, I took a screenshot of my profile page to remember it fondly. The Blue Check that indicates Verified status is on the same line as my name, with the Ukraine flag emoji and the penguin (for Linux, naturally.)

When Elon Musk purchased Twitter in October of last year for $44 billion, one of the first things that he set out to do was to do away with the old Verified User system, which was awarded to these qualified individuals and organizations free of cost, and replace it with Twitter Blue, an $8 per month subscription service that anyone could purchase. Organizations, such as brands and media outlets, must pay $1000 monthly for a “Gold Check.” (The company hasn’t clarified that organizations can simply use Twitter Blue subscriptions for $8 per month; I suspect that Musk will clamp down on that in short order.)

That negates the trusted aspect of Verified and allows anyone on the street to say they are a trusted, validated entity regardless of whether they are or aren’t.

This became a problem when the new version of Twitter Blue was rolled out when the new Verified users started impersonating brands.

There’s been heavy resistance from the vast majority of Twitter’s estimated 237 million daily active users to joining Twitter Blue — it only has 450K subscribers, each with an average of about only 1000 followers apiece, resulting in about $8M in yearly revenue to the company, which is currently about $13B in debt.

Schnookified Via Algorithm

That is a problem for Elon Musk. So if getting a Blue Check isn’t enough incentive to join, what else can he do? Well, he can threaten to turn you into a literal nobody.

See, Twitter, like other social media services, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, uses an algorithm to show you the most important content on the system — or at least, the content that Elon Musk’s Twitter feels should be important. This has nothing to do with the merit of your content or even how many followers you have; it’s dynamically generated based on how other users interact with the system, but it’s a formula that Twitter has come up with and naturally has certain biases — Elon Musk has inserted himself so that he always shows up in that first “For You” tab in the app and the web interface.

So as of April 20, you are removed from that algorithm if you do not subscribe to Twitter Blue. You become a nobody. That means you do not show up on that first and default “For You” page, no matter how many likes or interactions your content gets. Your content will only appear in the “Following” tab on accounts that specifically follow you. Given the way Twitter’s user interface is designed, you have to specifically click on “Following” to see those updates.

Twitter has a list of about 10,000 most-followed organizations and their top 500 advertisers that they will allow to keep their status, but for most Legacy Verified accounts, it’s the end of the road unless you pay up.

What has been the response to this so far? Quite the opposite of what Elon wants. Major media organizations such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO, and Vox have now said they would not pay for the verified badge for their institutional accounts nor reimburse their journalists for personal Blue subscriptions unless under special circumstances.

Still, we may see many smaller companies, celebrities, and other media personalities who dislike this policy, and Elon Musk and general, give Twitter the bird. William Shatner, a.k.a Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, and others have already indicated their intention to lose their Blue Checks and refuse to pay.

And myself? Elon Musk can stuff it. As Ray Liotta in Goodfellas said, I get to live on Twitter as a schnook. My greener pastures are now on Mastodon, the distributed open source social network and I encourage all of you to join it.

Although I will lose my Blue Check, I will continue supporting the Ukrainian people in their fight against Russian oppression by displaying the nation’s flag in my Twitter profile. Another way that I like to support them is by buying their Vodka brands — The most notable ones are Nemiroff, Khortytsa (KHOR), and Kruto, and all of them are exceptional and inexpensive. Most of these you can buy at Total Wine and other large retailers. While you can mix your favorite drinks with them, such as Bloody Mary, Vodka and Tonic, Screwdrivers, etc., I like to keep a bottle in the freezer and do shots with them straight up, such as the Nemiroff Honey Pepper shown above.