Mark Cuban Slams Elon Musk: Letting Anyone Get Verified ‘Killed the Most Valuable Part of Twitter’

Ethan Shanfeld
·3 min read
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After Elon Musk took over Twitter and introduced a surge of new policies regarding verification and impersonation, Mark Cuban is giving the fellow billionaire advice on how to fix the app.

With Musk’s new $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription, anyone can buy a blue check mark and become verified on Twitter. For Cuban, this “killed the most valuable part of Twitter, the ability to quickly and easily find information from sources I have chosen to trust.”

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“From one entrepreneur to another, for when you have your customer service hat on,” Cuban tweeted at Musk. “I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark [accounts] in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again. Hope this helps.”

Cuban admits that Twitter’s previous curation method for who got blue check marks “wasn’t perfect,” he says it meant that “someone took the time to decide that the user might be able to contribute something more.”

While Cuban thanked Musk for the “decline in all the crypto bots auto replying to my posts,” he says his verified mentions tab is now nearly impossible to sift through because anyone can purchase a blue check mark.

“I used to go through 100 tweets in my verified mentions. People who were curated by Twitter. Now it’s 2x and growing quickly,” Cuban wrote on Twitter. “And when it came to hate/trolls, it was rare from blue checks. But when it happened the engagement was epic. Now I have no way to filter the hate from the new checks, other than constant muting. Buy a check — crush someone’s verified mentions.”

Many people pushed back on Cuban’s comments, with one user writing, “No disrespect Mr. Cuban, but your experience on Twitter as a legacy blue check holder is likely very different from the average user. [Elon Musk] is attempting to level the experience of an average person, like me.”

Cuban responded, “With all due respect, I have burner accounts with 0 followers that I use actively. Precisely so I can have the same experience. I bought the blue check for 1. It still has 0 followers. But now I can enjoy ripping on you all and showing up as verified in your mentions.”

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