HACKER Q&A
📣 timdaub

From countries outside Twitter Verified places, how’s your experience?


I‘m from Germany and even if I wanted to, Twitter Verified isn‘t available as a subscription here. Only in the US, Canada etc.

It could be entirely placebo, but recently I‘ve seen more verified posts in my timeline and honestly I now feel pretty demotivated from posting. My understanding is that even if no changes were made to the algorithm, Twitter always favored verified accounts.

So since there are now more active verified users, for anyone not within those countries where it is available, I feel like posting isn‘t worth it anymore.

But at the same time, it‘s hard to tell and I‘d rather spend my time on a distribution platform where the mental model is clear.

And before everyone calls me an Elon hater: I think having an 8$ subscription for improving the social graph is actually a neat idea. I just think it‘s currently really half-assed if not everyone can subscribe.

What has your experience been? Do you still get through to your followers? Have you switched to alternatives? Did you get the blue checkmark?

  👤 Keyframe Accepted Answer ✓
I've tried Mastodon, but 'forgot' my password. Password reset never comes through the email so there's that about the alternative. Twitter, so far, seems to be mostly abuzz with Musk but overall not affected yet. It'd be an apt time for google to take on at least a couple of devs leaving twitter and try to restart their buzz/plus service. Musk, so far, hasn't shown that he knows what he's doing nor portrays confidence in how he handles stuff. Time will tell, maybe we're all wrong.
👤 spxd
I'm from Europe too, from a country that is not one of 5. I have a personal account from 2009 and a business account from 2015. Noone verified. I find that all polititians from all countries are verified, many other from different countries are verified, I'm not. $8? Why not. But I think there is one core problem. Those verifitions are "fake". If Twitter want a real verification will use some verification apps available on internet to verify users with IDs and proof of address. That will be a fair verification. Price for verification? $0.5 one time fee for verification.