The Latest Phase within the Elon Versus Zuck Fued Highlights the Flaws in Selling Verification Checkmarks

The newest episode of the Zuck versus Elon saga has taken a less savory turn, and interestingly, it looks as if Elon’s own changes to Twitter’s verification system have caused at the least a part of the misunderstanding on this case.

Pre-warning: This post deals with some NSFW references made by Elon, so when you’re prone to be offended, best to click away now and avoid potentially harmful mental images. The truth is, that warning applies to all readers – it’s not good areas to be venturing into.

So, following the launch of Threads, Meta’s latest Twitter-esque social app, Elon’s been taking subtle jabs at Zuckerberg, continuing their ongoing public feud. Which still may or may not end in a UFC-style cage match between the 2 mega-billionaires – but in the most recent development, Elon has actually challenged Zuck to a different type of contest:

Yep, that’s a legitimate tweet, from any person whom quite a lot of people consider to be one in every of the neatest people on the planet, and who’s doubtless one in every of the richest.

So where did Elon give you this notion?

It actually seems to have stemmed from this tweet, which Elon responded to shortly before issuing his challenge to Zuckerberg, and features a doctored screenshot from Threads referencing one other, separate insult from Elon (that ‘Zuck is a cuck‘).

That’s not an actual comment from Zuck – and as you’ll be able to see, the screenshot also includes a picture of Elon Musk’s profile pic, suggesting that he also has a Threads account (or an imposter using his image). But for whatever reason, Elon seems to have taken this as somewhat legit, or it got his mind racing either way, which has then led to his mentally scarring appendage challenge.

And as noted, at the least a part of what’s at play here is confusion around blue tick accounts, which used to only be allocated to noteworthy users, and folks who could generally be trusted to only share legitimate, researched comments, to a big degree. There have been some flaws in this technique, granted, but amid the continued backwards and forwards, on this case, and in lots of other debates, it’s getting harder and harder to know who to trust within the app, because now, the blue checkmark is meaningless on this context. And for some, that’s proving to be a habitual marker that’s difficult to shake.

To be clear, I don’t think that Elon actually believes that Zuckerberg posted this comment. But nonetheless, he’s taking this information from an account that he does trust, and engages with recurrently, which also has a blue checkmark. It’s probably silly to assume that we might need any understanding of what’s happening in Elon’s head – but he has repeatedly engaged with content from blue tick accounts which might be actually fake or parody presences.

Indeed, as T(w)itter News Day by day recently identified (note: non-Twitter accounts aren’t allowed to incorporate ‘Twitter’ of their profile name, hence the odd moniker, nevertheless it’s actually source of Twitter 2.0 news), many parody accounts on Twitter are literally causing confusion, since the self-appended ‘parody’ tag is being cut off from the username in-stream.

Elon responded to this, noting that:

However it’s a relevant point – Twitter’s decision to re-structure the verification program has caused a complete latest vector for misunderstanding within the app, which is hurting its value as a news and data source.

Which, in fact, can also be now the identical on Meta, where users can even buy a blue tick. The choice to sell verification markers is unnecessary on this regard, and can proceed to cause confusion – until users turn out to be so skeptical that they query every thing that they see, in every social app.

Which, in the long term, may not necessarily be a foul thing – but till we get to that stage, there’ll proceed to be misinterpretations and misunderstandings, resulting in people sharing false reports, joke tweets, and every thing in between, considering that it’s actually legit info.

It just looks as if a self-own, that might have been totally avoided – but nonetheless, as noted, possibly Elon knew this was fake all along and just wanted an excuse to issue such a challenge.

I don’t know, but I do know that the tweet stream is becoming less trustworthy each day.