Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.
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Threatening to remove verified checkmarks is a risky move given how many ‘Twitter alternative’ services like Threads and Bluesky are cropping up and how willing consumers appear to be to jump ship, with Threads rocketing to 100 million registrations in just five days. That said, it’s not like other efforts to drum up some additional cash, like increasing API pricing, have gone down especially well, either. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for him.
Hanlon’s Razor shouldn’t apply to businessmen because acting machiavellian and feigning ignorance is in their interest. But he has so thoroughly ruined his “real life Iron Man” reputation, that I doubt that this is some master plan. Even his other companies have lost value due to how bad he is fumbling this.
Yeah he definitely could have slowly killed the platform without humiliating himself like he is