Today's edition of "Christ, what an asshole"

So today our hero Elon Musk struck a blow for the working man by taking away those elitist blue verification checks!

Sort of.

I'll never be as rich as this man, but at least I'll never be as pathetic either pic.twitter.com/g7ulABeWbo

— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) April 20, 2023

this is honestly the most comically ridiculous thing ever. paying? please. there's still verification, only now it's some kind of weird passive aggressive thing Musk personally decides on? https://t.co/Y8JhC2U9Bb

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 21, 2023

Musk is pretending that celebrities like Stephen King and LeBron James, who said they would not pay for Twitter, are paying for Twitter, got called on it, and admitted he is paying their fees.
Feel like they should be labeled "Musk funded media" pic.twitter.com/2xFbEqWpLz

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) April 20, 2023

There used to be actual value to the blue marks, like showing people who to listen to when they needed help. 
Like, for instance, the City of New York. 

But Musk has once again demonstrated he doesn't understand what he is doing:

The Elon clusterfuck is ON pic.twitter.com/4dRlYq8GLz

— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) April 20, 2023

Kennedy School of Government professor Juliette Kayyem writes at The Atlantic about how Musk is breaking disaster-response Twitter:

...For years, Twitter was at its best when bad things happened. ... Twitter was useful in saving lives during natural disasters and man-made crises. Emergency-management officials have used the platform to relate timely information to the public—when to evacuate during Hurricane Ian, in 2022; when to hide from a gunman during the Michigan State University shootings earlier this month—while simultaneously allowing members of the public to transmit real-time data. The platform didn’t just provide a valuable communications service; it changed the way emergency management functions.

...Tweets were a mechanism for people to seek help. They were a mechanism for public-safety agencies to provide information on what or what not to do. They were a mechanism for legacy-blue-check sources to amplify essential plans. They were a mechanism for crisis managers to, through the API, drive resources where they were needed. Relief-and-response entities came to rely on the company, believing that its mastery of speed was a public service Twitter itself value

Dorsey started a company that claimed to have a social mission. Musk’s Twitterverse is a chorus of lols and whatevers. He recently joked that he acquired the “world’s largest non-profit,” and his focus appears to be on cutting costs and making Twitter profitable. But in the process, he has disrupted an emergency-management system meant to be reliable during disruptions.

Remember in 2018 when the actor James Wood became a twitter saviour during the California wild-fires? And the Cajun Navy responding to tweets to save people across the southern states after natural disasters? Elon Musk is acting like the world's richest 12-year-old - he replies to media questions with a poop emoji now:

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A post shared by The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail)

Other social media platforms who understand social media are stepping up:

🐳We decided not to wait. If you had a legacy checkmark, you can transfer it to https://t.co/hfFdnf3iBl even though Twitter removed it. It takes 30 seconds to transfer your legacy checkmark using our Quick Verify tool.

Note: Your Spoutible and Twitter handles must be the same. https://t.co/zhfiQNd5Cb

— Christopher Bouzy (@cbouzy) April 21, 2023

Oh how I wish I could embed posts from the other social media providers in this blog -- the only one that allows it so far is Instagram. I hope Spoutible or Post is working on this.

And finally, isn't this an interesting development tonight the "69%" label is gone from the CBC main twitter account. But labels have also been removed from authoritian state media outlets.

How to help Mr. Putin (whom I do not support):

Step 1: Create a false equivalence between state-controlled propaganda institutions in Russia and the free press in US/Canada.
Step 2: Remove the "state-affiliated media" label altogether as a reasonable "compromise."

— Spenol (@SpenolPalinUSA) April 21, 2023

So that’s exactly why he created the situation with PBS and NPR, to have an excuse to remove it from actual authoritarian state sponsored media. “Oh gee I’m just going to toss my hands in the air and remove it all then, I’m a free- speech absolutist derp derp”

— Harlowe (@wickedirishmn) April 21, 2023

Some are speculating that manipulating the monitoring system into taking the labels off actual authoritatian state media outlets was the idea all along. But I doubt it -- the company now calling itself T(w)itter doesn't seem to think that far ahead anymore.