When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, the internet collectively braced itself. The world’s richest human’s new toy was now a social media platform with an active user base of 368 million accounts — what could go wrong? One of the billionaire’s first changes to Twitter was to upend its “lords and peasants” system of deciding who gets a blue checkmark next to their name on the site. These checks, which users had to apply for, were a designation of the notability, activity, and authenticity of accounts. In place of that top-down system, users could now simply buy blue-check-mark-notability for eight dollars a month.
To distinguish accounts that Twitter verified using its original system, a message crops up when you click the blue check mark next to a user’s name: “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.” That middling statement could be the most accurate emblem of where the internet stands as it straddles the…
