X Marks the Controversy
X, formerly known as Twitter, has been under scrutiny since April 14, 2022 when the news of Elon Musk purchasing the platform came out. Since then, they’ve made headlines for more than just their name change.
Whether it’s paying for verification or actually paying to have an account, X is trying multiple ways to keep bots and troll farms from creating unwanted profiles. It starts with a $1 account creation fee, recently implemented in New Zealand and the Philippines. This allows the platform to see the payment verification, which is hard for bots to pass, especially when trying to start thousands of accounts. New users will not be able to like, post, bookmark, or reply until they either pay their “small annual fee” or stick around for three months. We can appreciate wanting to keep the troll accounts to a minimum, but is this just another way to profit off a once mostly-free app?
Musk launched a “pay for verification” service very quickly after acquiring rights to the app, meaning anyone with a blue checkmark would go back to just your average person, unless they planned on paying $8+/month to keep it. While some people pay and show it proudly, others who are verified without paying had the option to hide their blue tick so no one would think they’d spend money on something like that… until now. X will be taking away the ability to hide the check mark, but furthermore, any user with 2,500+ verified followers will receive a verified check for free. Musk had the idea that those paying for verification prove authenticity, another anti-bot measure, but again, it just seems like another way for this social platform to rake in cash.
One new way for X to make their platform seem worth the price is their new incentive for businesses to buy a gold check mark. Contrary to their blue check marks, the gold ticks show that the user is a verified business. With Musk’s continued political commentary, many businesses are steering away from using X for advertisements, but this new offer will give them equal ad credits that will be added to the account with the verification sign up and purchase. Meaning, if you plan to spend $2,000 in ads, you will get a bonus of $2,000 to spend as well. As a business, if your audience is still on X and you need priority support and extended reach for your ads, this could be an offer worth exploring. But a majority of credibility surrounding the blue and now gold check marks has been lost once the ability to buy it was released, which makes an incentive like this hard to justify.
Now with statements from DoubleVerify that their brand safety report was incorrect, there’s not much more that can be done to help build credibility and reliability back for X. As reported by Variety, “From Oct. 24, 2023, to March 14, 2024, DoubleVerify’s dashboard provided the wrong data for X to advertisers. In some cases, the measurement firm showed scores as low as 70%, whereas X’s Brand Safety Rates were in fact 99.99%.” The Brand Safety Rate is “a measure of how frequently ads appeared adjacent to content that met advertiser-approved criteria”. Being off by 20% or more can really impact the ad buys for this platform. Having an error for over four months once again downgrades any integrity of X and where advertiser money is being spent.
To round out all talks of integrity and credibility for X or Elon Musk, while they’re “attempting” to get bots under control, misinformation ahead of the U.S. election, in an election year might we add, is continuing to spread like wildfire. Being the face and owner of X, you’d expect (at least, we SHOULD expect) professionalism and a sense of couth. Not with this one! Musk has confirmed he does not fact-check what he posts on X, using burner accounts that have very easily been traced back to him, putting him in a hefty libel lawsuit in Texas. He goes on to say there’s no possible way for him to confirm the identities of those he interacts with, which is an even scarier thought considering those people are put in front of an audience of nearly 180 million people. Musk’s most recent amplification is “the false claim that hundreds of thousands of voters are registering without a photo ID in the U.S., a conspiracy theory that he’s repeatedly boosted, despite there being no basis for such suggestions.” Considering he has seemingly no interest in checking himself or others on this app feels like the end times (business wise) for a once very popular social media outlet.
Looking at the controversy from just the past two years revolving around X and its owner makes it pretty easy to assume businesses won’t be sticking around on this platform much longer, at least as paying customers. It has always been a tough platform to break out on, even while paying for ads. If you are looking to spend marketing money, maybe try Meta instead.