The Latest Phase in the Elon Versus Zuck Fued Highlights the Flaws in Selling Verification Checkmarks

The latest installment in the Zuck vs. Elon saga has taken a less palatable turn, and interestingly, Elon’s own changes to Twitter’s verification system appear to have caused at least some of the misunderstanding in this case.

Warning: This post is about some of Elon’s NSFW references. So if you might be offended, it’s best to click away now and avoid potentially harmful mental images. In fact, this warning applies to all readers – these are not good areas to venture into.

After launching Threads, Meta’s new Twitter-like social app, Elon Zuckerberg has delivered subtle digs, continuing the ongoing public strife. Which may or may not still result in a UFC-style cage fight between the two mega-billionaires – but in the latest development, Elon has actually challenged Zuck to a different form of competition:

Yes, this is a legitimate tweet from someone many consider to be one of the smartest people on the planet and is undoubtedly one of the richest.

So where did Elon come up with this idea?

It actually appears to be from this tweet that Elon responded to just prior to issuing his challenge to Zuckerberg, and includes a manipulated screenshot of Threads referencing another, separate insult by Elon (that “Zuck is a cuckoo‘).

This isn’t a genuine comment from Zuck – and as you can see, the screenshot also includes a picture of Elon Musk’s profile picture, suggesting he also has a Threads account (or a scammer is using his picture). But for whatever reason, Elon seems to have viewed this as reasonably legitimate, or it skewed his mind one way or another, which then led to his psychologically scarring appendage challenge.

And as previously mentioned, this is at least partly confusion about Blue Tick accounts, which used to be associated only with reputable users, and people who could generally be trusted to largely only pass on legitimate, researched comments. Admittedly, there were some flaws in this system, but amidst the ongoing back and forth, in this case and many other debates, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to know who to trust in the app, for now the blue tick is meaningless in this context. And for some, that’s proving to be a habitual trait that’s hard to shake.

To be clear, I don’t think Elon actually thinks Zuckerberg posted that comment. But then again, he’s getting this information from an account he trusts and interacts with regularly, which also has a blue check mark. It’s probably foolish to assume that we can understand what’s going on in Elon’s mind – but he has repeatedly delved into content from Blue Tick accounts that are in fact fake or parody presences.

Actually how T(w)itter News Daily As recently pointed out (note: non-Twitter accounts aren’t allowed to have “Twitter” in their profile name, hence the weird nickname, but it’s actually a good source of Twitter 2.0 news), many parody accounts are causing concern Twitter actually causing confusion because the self-appended “parody” tag is truncated from the username in the stream.

Elon responded to this, noting the following:

But it’s a relevant point — Twitter’s decision to restructure the verification program has created a whole new impetus for misunderstandings in the app, damaging its value as a news and information source.

Of course, this also applies to Meta now, where users can also buy a blue tick. The decision to sell verification markers makes no sense in this regard and will continue to cause confusion – until users become so skeptical that they question everything they see on every social app.

Which might not necessarily be a bad thing in the long run – but until we get to that stage, there will continue to be misinterpretations and misunderstandings, leading people to share false reports, hoax tweets, and everything in between, thinking this is the case is actually real information.

It just seems like a self-initiated effort that could have been avoided entirely – but then again, as mentioned, Elon maybe knew from the start that this was fake and just wanted an excuse to make such a challenge.

I don’t know, but I do know that the tweet stream is becoming less and less trustworthy by the day.