It's a sad occasion on this 21st of April: due to our decision not to purchase a Twitter Blue subscription for our main Twitter account, we've lost our blue check. 😭
The Story of DEV's Blue Check
We earned our verification badge in 2020. This was a huge honor, as DEV started as a humble Twitter profile way back in 2014 before becoming the platform and company that it is today. The growth we experienced on Twitter in those first six years was crucial—we never could have established the community we now have without the engagement, visibility, and connection that Twitter provided in our early days. 💙
Our blue check remained undisturbed for two incredible years until late 2022, when it endured a few rapid-fire design changes and eventually became a "legacy check" indicating that we may or may not be notable.
We think we're notable!! 🥲
And today...it's gone for good. Thankfully, our community on Twitter is more than 300k strong, so we're not easily imitated. 😉
How do I know I'm connecting with the real dev.to?
Our main Twitter account is DEV Community @ThePracticalDev, and that's not going to change.
We also maintain a Twittersphere of satellite accounts based on specific languages, frameworks, and interests. They're a little more specific than our main account, so we recommend following the accounts related to your interests!
And if you're done with the Bird App entirely, you can find us in the Fediverse @thepracticaldev@fosstodon.org, where we have a fancy green check verifying our identity.
#DEVCommunity (@thepracticaldev@fosstodon.org) - Fosstodon
4.94K Posts, 88 Following, 6.3K Followers · A community of software developers sharing coding resources and general commentary. Built on Forem, an OSS for building online community 🌱
fosstodon.org
Why not keep the blue check by paying for Twitter Blue?
Here at Forem, the company behind DEV, we're on a mission to build safe, modern, and independent communities on open source software. We understand as well as anyone that the social media landscape is always evolving, changing, and growing—and that we need to do the same.
We made the decision not to reinvest in the past/current social media landscape in order to focus on building the future.
Won't you join us? 😁
Top comments (60)
Yes! 🕺🏼
I give you the blue check don't worry 🌱
Thanks Thomas! Your blue check is all the validation we need 😁
You deserve any check, but... Does it have to be a check?
I could have put a coffee instead ☕
Because coffee/cappuccino > blue check
Mmmmmmmmm… cappucino. STARBUCKS HERE I COME!!!! LOOK OUT!!!! (Proceeds to place order online for 300 cappucinos)
300 cappuccinos for us, no problem ☕
Honestly, I might have an unhealthy addiction but its worth it.
Absolutely
While it's a bummer to lose the blue check mark, I am really glad that @ThePracticalDev is not paying for it. I can't get down with the idea of paid verification... It's the principle.
What principle? A local newspaper put a paywall up and I stopped using them. Elon turned this into a "I'm supporting the platform I use" symbol. Now, twitter is about the same as it was; a pointless waste of time, for me anyway, but I'm curious about why people don't want to pay to help support a platform they apparently liked right up until being asked to help support it. Do you support dev.to by paying? Or are you opposed to paying them on principle too?
It is not, and no one is pretending it is.
In the post it actually said the opposite:
Wow, that's bad form. Immediately after I said "a pointless waste of time" I said "for me anyway". It isn't a community, and I think the illusion of community is at the heart of this.
You said you were curious to understand. I replied showing you how some of your assumptions were wrong, hoping to clarify why people are not so inclined to pay for the blue badge now
Just don't bother to answer him. I think the guy has no clue of what are you talking about.
The principle of having to pay month to month for a checkmark that verifies your Twitter account is indeed you is what feels off to me. I think people should be verified on the validity of who they are and not on if they got the cash to pay — I suppose I'm more of a fan of the old way. To be clear, I'm not totally against Twitter having some sort of paid membership option or coming up with some way for folks to support them monetarily, though I'm not sure what that'd be like... luckily, I don't have to think about it. But, I don't really like the idea of paid verification on a system like Twitter.
Twitter's new management honors cash & currency and it's always been that for the new management. Whether it's the dollar or crypto, the only thing important other than their egomaniacal selves is how much you fill their bank accounts.
Making a billion or more selling zero-carbon electric cars is not the end in itself. Fighting against climate change is not the end in itself. These are just means to get fabulously rich...means no one else was exploiting.
By comparing twitter to a local newspaper, your argument just went down the sink.
The mark was also about being verified, an authentic user or representative. It's now a no man's land with no interest of protecting information from fake news and all the sh*t we have to cover our heads from.
Also, it uses the same symbol, further misguiding what it once was.
It's very naive to compare to a local newspaper paywall. It's a lot more than that and I believe you know it. In that specific subject, a paywall is a choice for their business. Better media will come with different business choices if people don't support that specific one.
Also, twitter is not only a news medium, not it was supposed to be. It may change by the wish of it current owner but that doesn't change what people consumed so far. That limited vision is what is causing twitter to lose 89% of its advertisers - or I may be wrong, who knows? I can't wait to see how it turns out.
That's simply not true.
To pay for it, you have to verify that you're a real person.
Therefore you are VERIFIED.
Bots don't pay for checkmarks.
I don't know who was not thinking things through at Twitter HQ--although those with bright ideas had probably been given severance the first week under new pathetic management.
The color scheme should have been carried through. VIP media (e.g. NYTime, WashPost, WSJ, etc) were given the gold checkmarks, government officials the silver or gray. Legacies with a certain number of followers (say, 100-500K, 500K-1M, 1-2M, and >2M) should have been given something like other web-safe colors, both paying and unpaying legacies with different colors, maybe dark color with light checkmark and light color with black checkmark.
If the military can come up with dozens of rank insignia, why can't Twitter?
Because they don't need to. You're either verified or you're not.
There was only one purpose and role for verification under previous management: establishment of an influential identity.
Now there are two types. The one that existed under old (and respectable) management. And the new one, who is the person willing to help Elon at $8 per month try to recover to his facepalming decision to use $44 billion to acquire a property worth $5, maybe $10 billion now, and declining even more as "customers" leave the platform under dreadful management.
No doubt much to your annoyance, I think you're going to find that Elon will make Twitter an viable, profitable company. That began with dropping the dead weight, which is the action of good management.
Twitter doesn't need 450m freeloaders, it just needs 400m decent people with 200m who pay.
Which is where it's headed.
A blue checkmark now absolutely does not mean that the account is verified as it once was.
Take dev.to as an example. It's not a single person, so the blue check never meant the account was verified as a single person (which you've said it does if it's paid for). Account verification was more than just about identifying non-bots.
To put it into context, if I so wished, I could sign up for one of those throw-away payment methods online (the kind used to default fraudsters and spammers) and then create a new Twitter account right now complete with a blue check. Has it validated I am who I say I am? No, it's validated only that I've paid for an account.
Further muddying the water, Elon Musk himself has admitted to paying (or just administering) the blue check to accounts that specifically did not want to pay for it, like the Author Stephen King. This means that even if an account didn't pay, it could still be granted the tick on an apparent whim.
It's disingenuous to still claim that the current blue check system is about verifying users.
I thought the payment requirement was a fluke until I saw this article . Now you know it’s bad when Beyoncé is among the folks who lost it.
Now, add
link rel="me"to DEV profile pages, and we can verify ourselves on Mastodon!Added this to a Discussion in our public repo! Great suggestion 🥳
So a good idea from Mastodon!
The blue check is meaningless now. Most of the ones I see are random people with... "hot takes". I agree with your decision to not pay for it!
I think dev.to will be my place to got for now. I'll miss the more general discussions over realtime events and news, but I'll dodge the site for good. The "For you" view is unusable right now because I only see unrelated Twitter Blue users. :/
YES
Twitter ain't the same anymore.
Regardless we move!
I prefer mastodon these days :)
When will DEV role out unicorn purple checkmark?
I need to be verified lol
Like many here, I fully support the position to not buy the blue checkmark. It'd be weird to me to watch you support this nonsense. Thanks for sharing it!
Support this decision!
This whole thing is completely bizarre. Blue tick, shmu tick - who cares? Do you really derive meaning or notability from having some blue pixels arranged in a tick next to your username? It's as dumb as posting clickbait content just to get likes. Are people's egos really that fragile?
As for determining the authenticity of an account - do you really need a checkmark for that? Isn't it better you determine that for yourself? Or do you want everything done for you?
All of this ultimately makes no difference to Twitter accounts that are actually well run and produce quality content. Twitter was, and is, in a precarious position financially (not profitable before, and now in trouble)... and obviously needs to find ways to pay the bills. If people value blue pixels so much, why not make them pay for them? It's ultimately just vanity.
Ever since the company was taken over - I have honestly seen almost no notable change in Twitter whatsoever. I use it the same way I always have, see the same amount of crap - and also the same amount of great stuff. The core functionality of it is still there, and there are as many d**kheads around as ever - and equally many ways to ignore them and not engage with them.
Twitter was not in a precarious financial position prior to the acquisition, which saddled the company with massive debt.
Twitter has always been in a precarious financial position. They made money for three years in the last decade. They lost money in 2020 and 2021. They've been saddled with debt since before they were launched.
Voldemort of Twitter even put a valuation of Twitter at less than half of what he paid for it: $20 billion. Not a chance: I put it at $5 billion, maybe $10 billion at most.
I think you can do both: support all platforms you use, and help build new ones.
To be fair, the "legacy" blue ticks were pretty toxic anyway. Sure, there's likely to be only one Barack Obama claiming to have been in charge of a country, but there's more than one "notable" person called John Smith floating around, and why should one be valid and the others not?
Over the years, a lot of hyper-famous celebrities didn't get a blue tick, but some complete randos did (like my old housemate, for example).
As time went on, it started becoming less and less "blue tick" and more and more "red flag" to the point where I would often bail on a thread if a blue tick turned up.
The blue check got meaningless, 'cos if everyone can pay for it, what exactly is it verifying?
It's verifying that the person is a real person. Bots don't have credit cards.
people who make bots have credit cards.
Perhaps, but that identifies them as a person and they get banned.
citation needed.
*required
You just need to absorb reality. To pay by credit card you need to have a credit card, so that you can fill in the credit card details, including your name and address. It literally identifies you as a person, and also as a person over the age of 18.
If you do something nefarious, they can stop you coming back to the platform. Unless you can get a credit card in a different name at a different address. Which is fraud. That's a crime.