{"id":1240252,"date":"2022-11-01T06:44:33","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T06:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/11\/01\/im-not-really-in-the-mood-to-finance-your-vanity-project\/"},"modified":"2022-11-01T06:44:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T06:44:33","slug":"im-not-really-in-the-mood-to-finance-your-vanity-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/11\/01\/im-not-really-in-the-mood-to-finance-your-vanity-project\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m not really in the mood to finance your vanity project \u2022"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\"><span class=\"featured__span-first-words\">News that Elon<\/span> Musk\u2019s interim Twitter leadership is considering charging users for verification on its platform has caused no end of consternation among current holders of the service\u2019s well-known blue check marks. Complaints have arisen about price (potentially too high) and value offered (potentially too low), among other concerns.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also fair to note that before the Musk deal was completed, Twitter had already begun to experiment with subscription-based services targeting its most active users. I am well aware of those efforts as a Twitter addict; I signed up for Twitter Blue and continue to pay for it. (Though it appears to be only a modest revenue driver to date.)<\/p>\n<p>The calculus of my support of Twitter, however, has changed.<\/p>\n<p>Before the Musk transaction, Twitter\u2019s product cadence had <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/alex\/status\/1390031562738180097\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">picked up pace<\/a>. Therefore, buying a cheap pass to beta features, which supported the company where I have long made my digital home, seemed reasonable. Sure, simping for a public company is about as sensical as pining after a celebrity, but what can I say? I\u2019m human.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter started to put much-demanded features behind its low paywall, including an edit button. For some folks, that was a draw.<\/p>\n<p>However, it felt like Twitter wasn\u2019t taking <em>existing<\/em> capabilities and putting them in a walled garden. Instead, the service was making new stuff aimed at a more niche audience, charging for incremental functionality. That did not bother me in the least.<\/p>\n<p>Now, however, Twitter is controlled by a single person instead of, I presume, owned by a good chunk of its users through index funds. Even more, it is largely owned by one person who took on quite a lot of debt to finance the deal. Encumbered with more obligations than before, Twitter is likely in a hurry to boost the rate at which it generates positive cash flow to service those new debts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News that Elon Musk\u2019s interim Twitter leadership is considering charging users for verification on its platform has caused no end of consternation among current holders of the service\u2019s well-known blue check marks. Complaints have arisen about price (potentially too high) and value offered (potentially too low), among other concerns. It\u2019s also fair to note that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1240254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1240252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}