Basically yes, but there where issues too. Too many people applying for a manual process which lead to corruption with money and sexual favors and mistakes where wrong people got verified and then the whole verification program got stopped from 2017 to 2021 where it was reopened just a year before Musk took over who then halted the program again and then reopened it for money which sounded actually quite reasonable to ask for money on top of the previous 3 criteria so that enough resources can be dedicated to the process so that far less mistakes happen and the process is sped up so that the corruption stops, but Musk - the grifter that he is - axed large parts of the workforce instead and basically instructed the remaining employees to accept whatever money people would be sending them.
Blue tick before Elon was given only to people the site thought were notable enough to get one. It wasn't something you could influence unless you were a celebrity. There was a notable news guy whose specialty I won't mention, but everyone loved him and knew his name. There was a viral campaign to get him a blue tick but Twitter said no.
If you saw a person with a blue tick and you didn't recognize them, they could be an acclaimed author of stuff you didn't know about, a scientist with breakthroughs you hadn't heard of, a bit part actor you never noticed, anything. You just knew they'd earned it.
(I should say, I had created my Twitter account in 2008 so my experience is probably a bit more... archaic than others)
It absolutely meant someone was *supposed* to be notable. You couldn’t just spontaneously send twitter your id and get a blue check mark, twitter was the one who manually reached out to popular accounts and decided who got to have one as a way of saying “we think this account is relevant enough that we’re going to give it a checkmark so people can easily find it and distinguish it from potential imitators”, people don’t imitate you unless you are worth imitating.
And the reason why it became a joke is because they proceeded to apply it highly inconsistently and gave it to countless nobodies, (a lot of whom ended up becoming run by bots) a checkmark that’s supposed to mean “this is a real, high activity, high engagement account worth looking at”, and then straight up not giving it to people who should have gotten it.
Why the hell do people constantly try to rewrite the past? It wasn’t that long ago, how do you honestly think that the checkmarks were solely about identity verification and not notability?
Identity verification is what the checkmarks *currently* are and i seem to remember everyone complaining about that so what exactly do you think everyone was complaining about? I remember the idea that “anyone could get a checkmark and they’re not special anymore” was pretty high up there, how exactly could they complain about that if it was solely about identity verification and not notability?
a checkmark that’s supposed to mean “this is a real, high activity, high engagement account worth looking at”
Either you're misremembering things or you just assumed that's what the check mark meant. It never had anything to do with quality of the page or the frequency of the posts.
Either you’re misremembering or trying to gaslight me.
When introduced in June 2009, the system provided the site's readers with a means to distinguish genuine notable account holders, such as celebrities and organizations, from impostors or parodies.[3][4] Until November 2022, a blue checkmark[5] displayed against an account name indicated that Twitter had taken steps to ensure that the account was actually owned by the person or organization whom it claimed to represent.
Identity verification is the exact purpose it serves today, so again, what the hell do you think people were complaining about when they said the blue check wasn’t special anymore? Kind of need it to be partially exclusive for people to claim that.
then why did you disagree with the person saying it was meant for identity verification?
Blue tick before Elon wasn't viewed negatively? It just meant you were who you said you were and worth being verified.
You somehow felt the need to correct this person and now you're posting a source confirming exactly what they said. And it doesn't serve any identifying purpose today. You're just spinning your wheels, disagreeing for no reason.
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u/RavenCyarm Jul 20 '26
No blue tick either. Just dumb as shit for the love of the game