What Next TBD: Stephen King Is Just as Confused About Blue Checks as You Are | 2023 In Review

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Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While the What Next: TBD team spends some time with their families during the holidays, we revisit some of 2023’s biggest, strangest, and best stories. Regularly scheduled programming resumes in January. Twitter’s “blue check” verification went from something you applied for, to something you could pay for, to something you had to pay for…to something that many celebrities wouldn’t even accept for free. Master of horror Stephen King told us he wouldn’t pay for a blue check, but he’s not going to fight it either—he just doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Does anyone at Twitter understand? Guests: Alex Heath, deputy editor of The Verge Jon Favreau, co-founder of Crooked Media, speechwriter for President Barack Obama Stephen King, author Originally aired April 28th, 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I made you think you was real.
0:02.0	My name is Caden Sinclair.
0:04.0	Some people call us American royalty.
0:06.0	We were Liars.
0:08.0	A new series on Prime Video.
0:10.0	We were happy. We wanted for nothing.
0:12.0	Based on the best-selling novel.
0:15.0	Something terrible happened last summer,
0:17.0	and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.
0:20.0	No one in my family will tell me.
0:22.7	When you're left for dead, you want answers. We were liars. New series, watch now, only on
0:28.9	Prime Video. Hey everyone. Emily Peck here with What Next TBD, closing out 2023. It's been a wild year, folks,
0:40.9	especially for tech. We saw AI finally break through to the mainstream. Crypto star,
0:46.6	or former star, Sam Bankman-Fried was put on trial and convicted. And I mean, so much Elon Musk drama.
0:56.9	But now it's the holidays, and TBD is taking a break from the news to look back at the year. We'll return with new episodes in January, and in the
1:01.9	meantime, here's one of our favorite episodes from 2023. We hope you enjoy. One of the splashiest and
1:10.7	most consequential moves Elon Musk made after taking over the platform formerly known as Twitter was to strip verified accounts of their blue check marks.
1:20.4	Overnight last spring, a blue check mark went from a symbol that meant you were who you said you were to a scarlet letter,
1:31.5	marking those who paid Musk $8 a month for the privilege of posting.
1:37.3	But strangely, some high-profile accounts got to keep their blue check marks free of charge,
1:41.3	even if they didn't want them, including novelist Stephen King.
1:48.1	So we asked King what he made of the change. Steve, can you, can you tell me who you are and what you do?
	...

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