Mike Ridley
Alex WildIf this policy is true, anyone with enough money to run a verified Twitter bot farm can buy the suppression of any account and bury any story they dislike.
That’s the end. Right there.
Imagine trying to follow protests in Iran with Elon Musk taking money from Iranian bot farms to hide all relevant tweets.
“That’s a fine thought you have there. Be a real shame if something happened to it.
But if you pay up for Twitter Blue, we can assure you’ll be protected…”
Sorry, forgot the alt-text on the image. It’s a screen-cap of a Musk tweet, “Twitter will start incorporating mute & block signals from Blue Verified (not Legacy Blue) as downvotes”
Just Matthew 🙏@alexwild
So it's "pay to un-free speech" now?
So it's "pay to un-free speech" now?
@Irreverent_B Musk would love an arms race where alternate sides of any issue try to outspend each other, right into Musk’s pockets. When really, the smart move is for everyone to just not play.
Haplogroup News 
@alexwild
Imagine trying to get the word out about George Floyd if Police Unions had been able to use bot farms to hide all relevant tweets.
Imagine trying to get the word out about George Floyd if Police Unions had been able to use bot farms to hide all relevant tweets.
Joe Katz@alexwild I love that they rolled this out the same night as the latest Twitter Files, too. Apparently they're fine with governments manipulating the platform, they just want to be compensated for it.
Warren Terra@alexwild
There's all sorts of things to hate about this idea. There's the organized, commercialized possibility you mention, but this mechanism also presents more intrinsic problems, even when it isn't being deliberately manipulated. Most of the people buying Twitter Blue are Elon's most pathetic and toxic incel fanboys; if you displease them, if you're unpopular with that demographic specifically, you'll now get disappeared on Twitter.
There's all sorts of things to hate about this idea. There's the organized, commercialized possibility you mention, but this mechanism also presents more intrinsic problems, even when it isn't being deliberately manipulated. Most of the people buying Twitter Blue are Elon's most pathetic and toxic incel fanboys; if you displease them, if you're unpopular with that demographic specifically, you'll now get disappeared on Twitter.
Alth@alexwild When UC Davis pepper sprayed students then hid it with SEO, but officially approved by the platform.
Voron@alexwild that was pretty much the plan from the start. It was easy to spot when the first iteration of purchased blue checks had the fact they would be bumped up in peoples feeds & replies & given more weight in thr search & trending algorithms.
Monetizing troll farms & disinfo ops
Monetizing troll farms & disinfo ops
Mike Hoff@alexwild Another example of more money = more "speech" + the ability to suppress speech you don't like.
Mark Bignell 
@alexwild I wonder how many 
Elon Bot Accounts exist under his control?
Elon Bot Accounts exist under his control?
Dean Segovis@alexwild That site is doomed. Can't believe what this idiot is doing.
Jerry Lerman@alexwild The same ones who were dumb enough to buy Trump's stupid NFTs will now pay the $8/month to Musk just so they can vote down liberal tweets; so they can "own the libs". Maybe Musk was smart on this one. He knows you can get money from these people by pressing certain buttons.
But, maybe it will force the better news sources and the smarter people from Twitter, leaving Twitter to fight it out with Truth Social, Gab, and Parler for the dregs.
HowToPhil@alexwild I've never been a fan of downvotes on any platform. I'm always far more interested in how many people are interested in a thing than in how many don't like it.
Dr. Lola Politicka@alexwild The Chinese and the Russians will LOVE this policy. It's a national security issue.
quayIt’s a matter of time before Twitter rolls out it’s “rent a botnet” service.
Damagednotion@alexwild there are scripts that can block all verified accounts before this happens. On chrome and Firefox I believe.
Morgan@damagednotion @alexwild iconic! win/win because it also makes it so that you can actually see posts from normal people
BruceThis just shows that these social media platforms owned by billionaires and subject to their whims aren’t reliable free speech platforms. They probably never were and it was just an illusion anyway. Hopefully Mastadon is the way forward.
Babu Sriram Thambidurai@alexwild Good old capitalism at work to suppress and maintain the status quo. 🤨 😁
Better Petty Dept@alexwild won't fix, as designed
Morgan@alexwild Alex, we were there for the end of twitter. The eulogy has been spoken, the body has been cremated. All that is left to do is scatter the ashes.
Conrad von Spee 
@alexwild Nice for political year, such as in Indonesia in the next year.
Robyn@alexwild Putin loves this idea. Probably gave it to him….
⚡️ Kozmo Voted Blue ⚡️Does that mean with enough money to run a verified Twitter bot farm someone can buy the suppression of Elon's account?
Ivar Nilsen
gft77@alexwild Musk hates bots until he doesn't. seems pretty much on par with all of his other convictions.
RMS06510@alexwild isn't libertarianism grand?
Seth Deckard@alexwild Which also means that Musk’s cult followers can easily bury any negative news about their dear leader.
Secretoriginz
Mike Conte@alexwild money is speech, again
costrike@alexwild It was an ad.
Andrei Kucharavy@alexwild it’s a feature, not a bug.
Karl Haro von Mogel@alexwild It's like... he puts no thought toward how the systems he wants to build can be gamed by malicious actors... while he tries to game his own system like a malicious actor!