The Elon Musk Twitter dumpster fire, Tuesday edition

Hey, Elon! How’s it going being the Chief Twit? What’s that? It’s not going good? Let us count the ways.

The new blue checkmark verification system has been delayed

Musk had employees (what was left of the Twitter workforce after firing 50% of the staff) working 100-hour weeks to create the infrastructure for charging for blue checkmarks. The goal was to launch Monday (November 7). Never happened. Maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile, lots of people are creating imposter accounts, which the original blue checkmark was supposed to prevent.

Meanwhile, the new rules over misinformation are…confusing.

Twitter published some new rules on what kind of posts are and aren’t allowed. It’s all a bit weird.

Musk discussed putting Twitter behind a paywall

Seriously, dude? SERIOUSLY? Apparently.

Musk is still threatening advertisers who have bailed

Great strategy, dude. Advertisers who have paused their Twitter plans include GM, United Airlines, Audi, Carlsberg, Pfizer, General Mills, and a ton of others. He’s in denial, too.

Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.

Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022

Yeah? It seems that you’re the person determined what “free speech” really is.

Cartoon for Twitter. #ElonMusk #Twitter pic.twitter.com/aeB7MkVxQM

— Michael de Adder (@deAdder) November 7, 2022

pic.twitter.com/3nAAFBYOte

— Laura Apollo (@lauraapollo) November 7, 2022

This is the best thing to ever happen to Mastodon, a social network competitor

If you haven’t heard of Mastodon, here’s a look. Unfortunately, it’s become a bit of a hellscape. If you’re looking to quit Twitter and try something new, here’s what you can do.

More to come, obviously.