Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Tuesday, March 28th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today.

I titled an episode last week, Twilight of the Blue Checks. Well, today is the sequel Rise of the Blue Checks

because starting April 15th, you'll have to be a Blue Check to appear on Twitter's For UTAB.

Also, the feds go after Binance, Disney cuts its entire Metaverse unit and the UK cancels its

NFT plans. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

Well here we go again. Elon Musk says starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be recommended in Twitter's

for you tab and also will be the only one

the only ones able to vote in polls.

He says this is to address what he calls AI Bot Swarms.

So basically, if you're a fan of the algorithmic Twitter feed you better hope your favorite follows pay up for the blue check

Because otherwise you're not going to see them there

Conversely if you tend not to like folks who would have the tendency to be willing to pay Elon for a blue check,

the for-you feed is about to become a lot more annoying, potentially. Quoting the verge.

Musk claims the move is, quote, the only realistic way to address advanced AI

bot storms taking over, end quote.

Verified users are also going to become the only accounts that can vote in polls for

quote the same reason Musk says. It's worth taking this announcement with a big

grain of salt as Musk's tweets haven't always turned into enforced policy or features.

Perhaps the biggest example of this is his promise from February

that the company was going to start sharing ad revenue with blue subscribers

something that's still missing in action almost two months later.

That same month he also promised to open source the company's algorithm by March 5th, which hasn't

...