What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Stephen King Is Just as Confused About Blue Checks as You Are | 2023 In Review
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, Emily Peck here with What Next TBD, closing out 2023. |
| 0:09.0 | It's been a wild year, folks, especially for tech. |
| 0:12.0 | We saw AI finally break through to the mainstream. |
| 0:15.6 | Krypto star or former star, Sam Bankman Freed was put on trial and convicted, and I mean so much Elon Musk drama. |
| 0:24.0 | But now it's the holidays and TBD is taking a break from the news to look back at the year. |
| 0:29.0 | We'll return with new episodes in January, and in the the meantime here's one of our favorite |
| 0:33.6 | episodes from 2023 we hope you enjoy. |
| 0:36.3 | One of the splashiest and most consequential moves Elon Musk made after taking over the platform |
| 0:45.1 | formerly known as Twitter was to strip verified accounts of their blue check marks. |
| 0:50.4 | Overnight last spring a blue check mark went from a symbol that meant you were who you said you were to a scarlet letter marking those who paid musk $8 a month for the privilege of posting. |
| 1:02.0 | But strangely some high-profile accounts got to |
| 1:05.3 | keep their blue check marks free of charge, even if they didn't want them, including |
| 1:10.4 | novelist Stephen King. So we asked King what he made of the change. |
| 1:18.6 | Steve, can you, um, can you tell me who you are and what you do? |
| 1:24.0 | My name is Stephen King. I'm a writer, freelance writer, novelist, short story writer, and sometimes essays and that's what I do. |
| 1:36.0 | That's who I am and what I do. |
| 1:38.0 | And you have 7.1 million Twitter followers last time I checked? |
| 1:42.0 | If you say so. |
| 1:44.0 | Stephen King, yes that Stephen King, |
| 1:48.0 | agreed to talk to me because he, like many Twitter users, |
| 1:52.0 | had a somewhat confusing weekend online. |
| 1:55.0 | Late last week, Twitter began removing verification badges, |
... |
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