Twitter never loved me anyway

Hi, it’s Drake in New York. Twitter’s old blue check marks are officially no more. But first…Today’s must-reads:• Deepfake detection technol [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi, it’s Drake in New York. Twitter’s old blue check marks are officially no more. But first… Today’s must-reads: • Deepfake detection technology is [lagging behind generative AI]( • SpaceX said it [blew up its Starship rocket]( • Amazon lost EU court fight over [double antitrust sales probes]( Check mark blues On April 20, a date Elon Musk really likes for [some reason](, Twitter finally began the long-threatened and delayed [purge of blue verification check marks]( from people who had not signed up for its $8-a-month subscription service. It’s a change Musk has talked about frequently, and few things better typify the ethos of the company under him. As anyone who spent time on the platform knew, the check marks were originally a mechanism to verify that the tweets posted to, say, Chrissy Teigen’s Twitter account or [Pope Francis](’s were actually from them (or at least from an officially designated [Vatican social media team]() and not from an impostor. But over time, the little blue check marks became a kind of badge, giving the tweets of certain public officials, celebrities and journalists the sort of imprimatur of those special luggage tags airlines give their frequent fliers. Journalists, it seems, took special comfort from them. The check marks weren’t hard to get — or that’s what I’d heard. Intermittent and ambivalent Twitter user that I was, I never got one. I assume that, had I put some effort into it, I could have, but it’s also probably true that, had I been deemed important enough, a significant enough voice in the great online marketplace of takes, even my anemic contributions would have gotten me my blue badge. But, I told myself, I wasn’t going to flatter Twitter by groveling for its approval. I wasn’t going to play their game. Though if they saw fit to deem me a person of substance and import, I might grudgingly accept their silly symbol. Like everything else, “blue check mark” came to have a political valence. And attempts to fact check even clearly insane claims got caught up in accusations of bias and elitism. Still, I felt a certain twinge of understanding when check-less Twitter users griped about the arbitrarily awarded authority the company was handing out to certain users but not to others. Today, as its new policy underlines, Twitter is far less interested in trying to separate information from misinformation. The company has fired or lost through resignation most of the people whose job was to do that. Easier, then, to just make it a subscription thing. I realize all of that, and I certainly don’t celebrate it. As a journalist, I find it deeply worrying. It means, among other things, that Twitter is more likely to be plagued by impersonators and less useful during times it traditionally has been at its most helpful — the breaking news events and natural disasters when misinformation can have lethal consequences. But, having mostly quit the service even before Musk took over, I have to admit to a bit of guilty relief at the news. Now the reason I don’t have a blue check mark is because I won’t pay Twitter for it. Like just about everyone else. —[Drake Bennett](mailto:dbennett35@bloomberg.net) The big story The buzz around artificial intelligence that’s helped juice gains for [Microsoft and Amazon]( this year may also be masking struggles in a business far more critical to the pair’s bottom lines. Meanwhile, Google merged AI research groups into one unit as the [AI race intensifies](. Get fully charged Google merged DeepMind, an early leader in AI development, [with the company’s Brain unit](. Taiwan Semiconductor’s shares gained the most in two months after [reaffirming its spending target](. Airlines are turning to AI to aid in [long-haul flights](. MercadoLibre plans to add 13,000 jobs this year to [expand the logistics business]( of the Latin American e-commerce giant. Capita, one of the UK’s biggest outsourcing companies, said [customer data may have been stolen]( during a recent cyberattack. More from Bloomberg Get Bloomberg Tech weeklies in your inbox: - [Cyber Bulletin]( for coverage of the shadow world of hackers and cyber-espionage - [Game On]( for reporting on the video game business - [Power On]( for Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more - [Screentime]( for a front-row seat to the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley - [Soundbite]( for reporting on podcasting, the music industry and audio trends Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. 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