I see another influx to Mastodon in our future...
@mmasnick Prob a dumb question but what's stopping bots from getting that blue check mark?
@liztai absolutely nothing.
@mmasnick @liztai Do Twitter bots really deliver enough value to be worth $8 a month each though?

@AlexandreZani @mmasnick @liztai why would it be their money? They just have to grab stolen credit cards (or if a government entity - generate them).

I mean think about how many scammers pay for ads now. This is cheaper than that. By a lot.

Heck, I won’t be surprised if his ad revenue drops because of this.

The Republican billionaire donors, foreign & domestic, funding Trump already have a system of money laundering in place via GoFundMe, GiveSendGo, PayPal, cryptocurrency, credit card fraud, payment processors, straw donor bank accounts.

Examine a large scale pattern of micropayments from small dollar donors from megachurches and nonprofits. As long as they're below the threshold, the source doesn't need to be recorded for the FEC.

Musk's most recent scam just adds to the repertoire of grift.

@Npars01 that right there is a solid business model.

@ig88

It used to be illegal to engage in foreign threat funding for terrorism since 9/11.

OPEC+ got smart.

Now they fund far-right conservative political parties instead, & are able to attack democracy with impunity, using corrupt Republican & Tory politicians.

The political violence gets whitewashed by the political party.

Moneyed oil interests can keep their hands clean as they support genocidal war in Ukraine & unresponsive & anti-democracy elites in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia etc