Is Elon Musk the most openly 420-friendly billionaire? Possibly. To our knowledge, Jeff Bezos hasn’t smoked a blunt with Joe Rogan. The Tesla/SpaceX guy — who also apparently also runs a now chaotic social media platform — loves weed jokes. He loves them so much that it’s not clear if he’s serious about removing all those pesky legacy blue checkmarks from Twitter on April 20, aka Marijuana Day.
Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2023
Musk has had it out for legacy check-marked accounts, which he claims create an unfair hierarchy on a site allegedly meant to democratize the planet. His has never been a very sound argument; for one thing, he’s creating a new hierarchy by forcing people to pay for the formally free service just to get “verified.” Like most of Musk’s Twitter innovations since he took it over last November, it’s all been a terrible, sad mess, especially once he mucked with the language describing each person’s check mark so that it’s unclear who’s legacy and who’s forking over cash to have the illusion of legitimacy.
Dropping an ultimatum for when legacy check-marked users — including celebrities, journalists, publications, and other accounts of note, whose blue check was meant to show they’re.real and not an imposter — was clearly meant to pressure those who haven’t handed Musk a monthly amount to do so, and fast. Many of those with legacy accounts, including the White House, have balked at the idea and declared they won’t.
So maybe on Weed Day, a bunch of formerly verified accounts will suddenly go all naked. There may even be a mass exodus. There could be a rash of imposters flinging fake news about real people they’re not. Or maybe Musk will relent. Or maybe he’ll just not do any of this. Fun times on the online service that started as random people sharing what they had for dinner.
(Via Variety)