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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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My bad, I meant $100/year.

And the answer is yes, that's pocket change for @marietherealtor - she regularly spends 10x that on things like donuts + paper fliers + balloons for an open house

She certainly can afford it, but that's different from finding it valuable enough to purchase.

Assuming the average person reading replies scrolls down a full screen, you need between 3 and 7 people who replied to ElonMusk/ye/etc to be verified and spam is pushed down.

If it's implemented as you describe, where verified posts crowd out nonverified no matter what, wouldn't that that'd severely degrade the twitter experience, because unverified people often post better replies than verified people? not sure what you mean precisely

But hey, probably you have a better grasp on stopping scams than Elon Musk (early Paypal) and David Sacks (early Paypal)

They've spent a lot of time as VC/executives, and even smart people who are experts can make mistakes. I know someone who works in a related area IRL who agrees, and the people I follow on twitter who work at twitter seem to agree too.

She certainly can afford it, but that's different from finding it valuable enough to purchase.

I mentioned a realtor because the general sentiment I'm seeing on retwitter and fintwit is a mix of "wtf why so cheap" and a few "I want to verify but stay anon". For example @realestatetrent, an anon account wants to be verified as "a PE guy who buys strip malls" so people take him seriously when he talks about never buying a place where a dry cleaner ever was.

If it's implemented as you describe, where verified posts crowd out nonverified no matter what, wouldn't that that'd severely degrade the twitter experience, because unverified people often post better replies than verified people?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587500060853424129

How does it degrade the experience? Musk has explicitly described bluechecks getting to the top of replies, search and mentions. Assuming the typical screen holds 6 replies, and the typical @kanyewest tweet gets >1000 replies, you need 0.6% of people who reply to be verified to push spammers and cheapskates 1-2 screens down where most people will never see. Eyeballing a few other celebs - @kingjames, @kyliejenner - suggests 1000 is a reasonable number. For your 20% number to make sense, are you aware of many crypto scams in the replies of minor celebs who get only 30 replies/tweet?

0.6% is a lot less than the 20% you were talking about, making me think you didn't do any back of the envelope math on the mechanics proposed.

I have no direct experience with replies, but my experience with search and browse is that > 2 screens might as well not exist. Do you have different info? What do you think is the 95'th/99'th percentile of scroll in twitter replies?

...the people I follow on twitter who work at twitter seem to agree too.

Color me shocked that people angry about a hostile takeover don't like anything about the new guy.

How does it degrade the experience? Musk has explicitly described bluechecks getting to the top of replies, search and mentions. Assuming the typical screen holds 6 replies, and the typical @kanyewest tweet gets >1000 replies, you need 0.6% of people who reply to be verified to push spammers and cheapskates 1-2 screens down where most people will never see.

Yeah, and that means the top replies will be 'by people who paid' and not 'the funniest tweets as selected by likes'. It degrades the experience by destroying the 'like' mechanism sorting good tweets to the top! It's better to have the top reply be <funny joke that got 500 likes> as opposed to <tweet from verified user @JoeRealtor saying "Wow, great job!".

Color me shocked that people angry about a hostile takeover don't like anything about the new guy.

I'm specifically referring to the bluecheck thing here.

I also can't tell if the checkmark will involve identity verification? As it stands I don't think it will, it'll just be a nice checkmark that's part of blue?