Twitter's blue tick was more than a status symbol

On Tuesday, Twitter's new dastardly daddy Elon Musk vowed to do away with the platform's verification process. He called it a "lords & peasants system" that he'd democratize by making it available to anyone for $8 a month. Those users would get a verification badge, have their tweets prioritized in replies, mentions, and searches, and see "half as many ads." The problem is, verification wasn't meant to be a free-for-all. It was meant to weed out phonies and trolls, tell you who on Twitter was a ...