In mid 2016, when OnlyFans set up as a simple, paywalled Twitter clone and invited its handful of initial entertainers to "earn money doing what you do already", it was really saying: "come and monetise what Twitter is too stupid to realise has value". Six and a half years later, Twitter still hasn't joined those dots...
If you haven't been riveted to Twitter this week, you've been missing the greatest real-life soap opera in Internet history. Barely has there been time to digest one plot climax, before the next one dropped onto the timelines in a pyre of flames. And at the centre of the story, one Elon Musk - the new owner whose leadership has been so breathtakingly abominable that there's now a conspiracy theory claiming he deliberately set out to destroy the company.
We have to remind ourselves that this is probably the first time in Musk's life when the people upon whom he relies for survival have been in a position to flick him the vees. His core mistake, it seems, has been a failure to realise that the millions of people who provide his site's real product - the entertainment - are not on his payroll and don't care a jot about his needs or desires. The obvious solution is to put them on the payroll. Make them care. Make Twitter mean something to them. Make it into their job.
And if he doesn't? Well, we saw the answer to that this week. If $8 is the only consequence that entertainers face for creating a "verified" prank account, impersonating a real company and wiping a fortune off its stock value, then it's bye-bye stock value.
Yes, Elon Musk's assumption that no one would abuse their new Twitter Blue "verified" status to impersonate a brand or public figure (on the grounds that the inevitable suspension would represent a waste of $8), proved wildly misguided. Pranksters immediately realised it was gonna be the best $8 they'd ever spent, and Twitter went crazy with fake brands, fake celebs and fake politicians - all of them newly "verified" - helpfully committing PR suicide on behalf of the entities they were impersonating. Meanwhile, the exact account holders we all expected to buy blue ticks - the spammers, crypto drones and similar vortexes of mindless repetition - lapped up the $8 "verified" marque like squirrels around a bag of nuts.
In the space of 48 hours, the blue tick's repute had plunged from 'symbol of prestige' to 'train-wreck of squabbling, class war and commercial terrorism'. Many blue tick purchasers were, at the least, shamed with the now immortal "this mf paid for twitter" meme, as hashtags such as #BlockTheBlue kicked off a trend of unverified users blocking or unfollowing "verified" users. At first only the Twitter Blue subscribers, but some unverified users are now unfollowing the "legacy" blue check accounts too. More on that in a moment.
In the wake of its most disastrous introduction ever, Twitter ended the week with a withdrawal of the new flagship Blue "verification" system, launched just two days earlier.
Customisable paywalling is a proven formula. The fact that it was proven by a group of strippers does not make the money it generates any less real.
As the chaos built, Musk began to warn of potential bankruptcy. Whether it's a record for a new owner to be discussing bankruptcy after less than two weeks in the chair I don't know. But Twitter is equipped to make a huge profit. It's profited in the past, when making brave, long-termist decisions in the interests of the mainstream userbase. But it can't profit from hit-and run decisions which are only really designed to recover the boss's investment stake with minimum effort, and in minimum time. Twitter needs to let its entertainers design its paywalling network. I'll come back to this too.
Among the blighting factors that Twitter has encountered this week, we've seen...
1. A privacy/security scare, which has grown in the wake of exposé threads from former employees, and a mass departure of key company heads in the compliance field. Musk's desperation for revenue, coupled with said factors, is now fueling a perception that he's about to start flouting privacy laws to monetise user data. The issue is being taken seriously enough for the Federal Trade Commission to have reminded Musk that he's not above the law.
2. A large scale return of previously suspended users - some of whom are now even banned from the alternative social platforms they moved to.
3. The aforementioned catastrophic launch for the new Twitter Blue "verification" system, which has escalated "blue-tickgate", legitimising spammers, drones, pranksters and hate speech, whilst further dividing the platform into opposing factions.
Many users are already blocking the now publicly identifiable Twitter Blue subscribers on sight, and there's another emerging trend of hating on "legacy" blue ticks, as a vast number of them prove Musk's "lords and peasants" statement true. Time after time this week, I've found myself staring open-nouthed at blue-check (1.0) Tweets which basically boil down to:
"Hey peons, can ya help us preserve the Blue Tick Private Members Club, so we can continue to appear superior to you, retain all our unfair advantages over you and avoid being disturbed by your worthless plebian twatter?"
Umm, nope.
Whatever Elon Musk intended, his blue-check saga has managed to create ill-feeling pretty much across the board.
4. Noticeable migration of well-known users to other platforms. Stephen Fry - one of the biggest names to migrate so far - closed his Twitter account on Tuesday and moved to Mastodon, leaving behind 12+ million Twitter followers. After signing up to Twitter in 2008, Fry extolled the bird-site's concept of instant connectivity on peak viewing UK TV, driving a stampede of interest and assuring Twitter's mainstream acceptance nationwide. This is not the first time he's left Twitter, but it's the first time he's sought to replace Twitter with a direct alternative.
I covered some of the other issues of the week in their earlier stages of escalation. For details, see Can Twitter Survive Elon Musk? and Musk's Twitter Crisis Deepens.
There's been a tendency at various points in this story for the neutral public to sympathise with Elon Musk. He can be entertaining, but like any other rich douche he's deeply exploitative and inherently dishonest. Here's an example of how the world's money-hoarders operate...
Step 1. Create a problem. For instance: from Twitter's CURRENT Terms of Service...
"Do (exclamation mark), build solutions that automatically broadcast helpful information in Tweets.
Translation: "HEY EVERYONE, USE BOTS!"
"Do (exclamation mark), run creative campaigns that auto reply to users who engage with your content.
Translation: "HEY EVERYONE, USE BOTS!"
"Do (exclamation mark); Build solutions that automatically respond to users in Direct Messages."
Translation: "HEY EVERYONE, USE BOTS!"
Step 2. Blame the public for the problem which you created, are actively encouraging, and have no intention whatsoever of stopping.
Step 3. Claim that you are fighting a noble but fruitless fight against the problem you created, even though you are still actively encouraging it, and could solve it literally overnight with simple technology. In this case an industry-standard script to detect and block automation.
Step 4. Ask the public to give you money, and tell them it's the only way to solve the problem that you created, are actively encouraging, and could in fact solve overnight with a piece of code.
What are they like?
If Twitter did collapse as a result of this clown's self-serving antics, it would potentially bring the end of the world's best search engine. Another great tragedy would be that the smaller spaces, in which smaller voices have been visible and able to reach an audience, would drown in self-promo as the bird-site's most manipulative and entitled actors arrived to aggressively monopolise attention. This is already happening in the Fediverse. Literally the first thing some of the bigger names are doing on arrival is haranguing everyone to amplify their shit.
But Twitter is inherently monetisable, and that's very nearly a proven fact...
In 2016, a brand new website launched, from scratch, with a userbase of zero. It was a straight clone of Twitter, with an almost identical appearance. But there were a couple of very important differences. Differences that would spawn a multi-£billion turnover within five years. One was a progressive paywalling system, and the other was a radical policy in which the entertainers did not only create the content - they also devised the monetisation tools...
The site was, and still is, called OnlyFans. It's always been an adult platform, and people often attribute its success to its adult nature. But in fact, the explosion in OnlyFans' prosperity came at a time when much of the subscription-based adult market was in collapse. I mean, how does a subscription-based site compete with a Web full of free porn?
Answer: it lets its entertainers define and shape its monetisation system. They know best what their consumers will and won't pay for. The more control they have over how they monetise each individual consumer, the more opportunities they're able to exploit, and the more they earn. The platform takes its rapidly growing cut. Everyone's happy.
That was OnlyFans' recipe for success. But the most telling factor in the story was encapsulated in the newly-launched site's marketing tagline, as broadcast to Twitter users...
"Earn money doing what you do already!"
In other words, MONETISE WHAT TWITTER IS TOO STUPID TO REALISE HAS VALUE.
And over time, guided by suggestions from its workers, OnlyFans transformed from a basic, paywalled Twitter clone, into a complex network of monetisation tools. Paywalls within paywalls. Ultimately, it was possible for one consumer to pay £5 a month, whilst another paid £5,000. That flexibility is only possible when a tech boss listens to successful entertainers and gives them the tools to seize every opportunity.
The system on Twitter would obviously need to be different from that on OnlyFans. Twitter is a mainstream platform and I'm definitely not suggesting anyone tries to turn it into a porn shop. But this is the whole point of letting successful entertainers map out the monetisation system. They're incentivised to get it right, and they have the knowledge to do so. And no one is going to lark about playing pranks when their livelihood is at stake.
In one respect I agree with Elon Musk. With economic conditions as they are, Twitter in its present form does face a struggle for survival. But there is absolutely no reason at all why Twitter needs to stay in its present form. In my view, it's now paywall or bust.
That doesn't mean locking off the whole platform. Keep the freely-accessible default, and then give entertainers, mainstream celebs - whoever - the tools to monetise on demand. Their tools. Free communication is not disturbed, the platform's existing virtues are preserved, you don't divide the site into more pockets of anger, and fans can spend their money on whatever extras they want. Customisable paywalling is a proven formula. The fact that it was proven by a group of strippers does not make the money it generates any less real.