twitter is a circus. FROM Elon Musk taking over the leadership of the social network, he quickly began to make some senseless decisions. The one that has had the most impact and is currently driving the platform into chaos is Twitter Blue’s paid “verification”.
There are more and more parody accounts with a blue badge are joking or spreading false information. The above, of course, leads some people to believe that they are reading the official profile, completely falling for the hype. However, there is already chrome extension who comes to do the work that Elon Musk and his management did not want to do.
Basically, it’s an extension called eight dollars -obvious mockery of Twitter Blue-, solves social network clutter. Its purpose is simple: show you when you read the official account or the one that shelled out $8 to get your blue badge.
Twitter’s current problem is that it’s not possible to easily distinguish between officially verified users and those who have subscribed to said service through the interface. The only option, of course, is to parse their username, trying to determine if there’s an obfuscated variation that keeps them undetected. Let’s face it, this extra step shouldn’t be there.
Thus, Eight Dollars displays two types of messages. “Paid for verification”, for those who received a blue badge by opening a portfolio; or “Really Checked”, for really checked. Interestingly, the developer of the extension, Walter Lim, illustrates the use of his tool using the official Elon Musk account and a parody.
Once the Twitter Blue rollout began, some people took the opportunity to create parody profiles of the new Twitter CEO. Maybe they don’t know that Elon Musk only likes comedies when they aren’t directed at him…
Since the extension is still in development, requires manual installation outside of the Chrome Web Store. But don’t worry because by following these steps you will get it up and running in no time. Note that this can be Chrome or any other Chromium-based browser (such as Edge, Vivaldi, Opera and Brave, to name a few):
- Open your browser and in the search bar type: chrome://extensions.
- You will see an option developer modeactivate it.
- Download the extension from the following link. This is the same one available on the GitHub extension website.
- Unzip the file.
- Returning to the browser, find the button unpackaged cargo and select the folder you unpacked.
- Return to the extensions section and make sure that Eight Dollars is already activated.
Twitter’s failed attempt to resolve chaos
From Twitter, they probably know that the verified ones are out of control. In fact, this week the company tried to solve the problem introduction of a second system of official checks for public figures, companies, media and governments. Instead of a blue badge, these profile types now have an “Official” label.
Twitter, however, failed to consider that the majority of those interested in following Twitter Blue would not see it with good eyes. Why? Because then the blue icon won’t have any real meaning other than a simple visual indicator. The system did not last even 24 hours because they decided to put it on hold. Absolutely ridiculous.
While the manager said that he had ordered the withdrawal himself, a Twitter employee clarified that new check will be available again later. Of course, only for governments and companies. “The official tag is still part of the Twitter Blue launch – we’ll only focus on government and commercial organizations to begin with,” said Esther Crawford.
Source: Hiper Textual
