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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32466 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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they are not minor though. were talking verification-level privileges. ppl pay $1k or more for this. I think though it will not have all the privileges. But just having your comments rank high and not be put in the spam filter is a major benefit. Worth more than $8 if you have a small business and just need the extra visibility (way cheaper than advertising, which can easily cost $1 per click).

You said (I haven't read myself because Twitter delenda est) that the benefits are:

  • Priority in replies

  • Priority in mentions

  • Priority in search

Those are pretty minor benefits. I sincerely doubt that a scammer will get more than 8x as much value from those as from a normal account (which is what it would mean for them to be willing to pay $8 for verification but unwilling to pay $1 for a normal account). There is also no mention of being immune to spam filters in what you listed there, so unless you forgot to mention it in your OP I'm not sure where that is coming from.

And perhaps people did pay $1000 or more for verified accounts before. Honestly I would never have believed people were that retarded, but I'll take your word for it. But you seem to be assuming that it's because being verified had some great practical benefit. That doesn't seem right to me. Having a verified account (until now at least) was a status symbol. People will pay absurd amount of money for all kinds of status symbols, that doesn't therefore mean they derive material benefit from them. It means people are vain and will do stupid shit to seek status.

Honestly I would never have believed people were that retarded, but I'll take your word for it. But you seem to be assuming that it's because being verified had some great practical benefit.

It's not uncommon for crypto scammers impersonating Musk or some other famous person to make thousands of dollars with a crypto scam using a verified account, hence why they pay $1k for it. A tweet by Musk not uncommonly gets 40k+ comment replies, only 200 at a time can shown, and replies by verified accounts have priority over the non-verified ones and are not buried. For someone promoting a scam that can net thousands of dollars easily, this is worth it.

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