Blue
When Elon Musk first took over Twitter a few months back I was excited. We had been teased about what changes were going to come about for months, so even if he made only half the changes he promised? The network was going to become revolutionary again, and I was willing to pay my fair share for extra goodies.
Well, he has largely (the suspicious hiring of WEF maven Linda Yaccarino aside) kept his word thus far… largely. Unfortunately there have been a couple of hiccups thrown in as well, hiccups which are starting to render the network - at least in part - useless for me.
Before we get to that, however, let us discuss Twitter Blue, the famous (infamous?) $8-a-month paid service. Here are the benefits, and what they mean for me…
1) Ability to edit posts (absolutely 100% critical for using the platform)
2) Bookmark folders (vital for creating the ‘Evening Lines’)
3) 4,000 characters (a little excessive for ‘tweets,’ but nice to have the option)
4) Extra video features (at this time not relevant for my Twitter usage)
5) Spiffy home-screen icons (although this is strictly cosmetic, I love this perk)
6) Verification for us ‘lowly’ commoners (yep, that ‘blue checkmark’)
7) Meltdowns of Twitterati Elites and ‘edgy’ basement-dwellers (that part is fun)
Bear in mind I was subscribed to Twitter Blue long before Musk took over and expanded the benefits. The service - at that time half of what it costs now - had few features, though the editing option and ability to change my home-screen icons made it worth the price.
As for what was added after Musk’s acquisition? I am not going to lie, I enjoy having a blue ‘verification’ checkmark, if for no other reason to piss off those who get irritated by such things; the rest of the new features are useful to varying degrees, but those degrees could shift if given the right circumstances.
At the moment, however, those circumstances are shifting in the wrong direction; as I previously noted, there have been hiccups.
One of the most glaring - and, in my opinion, most inexcusable - is the fact that Twitter now throttles traffic to tweets with links to outside websites - especially Substack. Matt Taibi, Alex Berenson, and others noted this fact months ago, and I have seen with my own eyes that it is true; paying for Blue does nothing to counteract this fact, either.
One of the greatest - honestly, one of few - legacy benefits of Twitter was being able to use it to promote work outside of Twitter. Those days appear to be at an end, and if they are? It may end up being THE deal-breaker for me.
So while I do enjoy using Twitter again, and appreciate the freer-speech approach Musk has brought to the platform (at least for the moment, although there are hints that the aforementioned Yaccarino hire is already having an adverse effect), to censor - in any manner - tweets which point to other sites is foul, unless said-sites harbor criminal activity. It smacks of an anti-speech mindset, and gives off whiffs of manipulative control.
I am not good with either of those possibilities; Twitter is where I play, but Substack is where I live… and if I have to choose between the two?
Fortunately, I do not have to make that choice as yet; I still have a little over two weeks left on my current 'Blue subscription, so I will hold out until then and continue to look for a workaround. If I cannot find one, and if I determine a way to utilize Twitter to cover my needs without the extra features (especially for the Evening Lines), then the blue checkmark will go bye-bye.
I will really miss those nifty icons, though…
[Note: While my plan was to include a paragraph or two ruminating over the individuals attacking people who choose to pay the $8 a month, I have decided the topic deserves its own article. I will say this much, however: A majority of us who pay do so for ALL the extra features; it is NOT exclusively - nor for some even remotely - about the blue checkmark].