Tech Tok: Fiasco over Blue Tick remains chaotic

We all know about how Musk introduced Twitter Blue, a subscription service that will provide users with special features and allowances

If recent developments at Twitter are taken into consideration, it is safe to say that Twitter CEO Elon Musk wakes up every day with an innate desire to create chaos on the micro-blogging website.

The latest is nothing short of a disaster for a platform of such repute. But since it is Musk, it is largely being treated as any other bizarre issue at Twitter. So, here’s what happened.

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We all know about how Musk introduced Twitter Blue, a subscription service that will provide users with special features and allowances. What he also did simultaneously was nudging users with a legacy blue tick to quickly subscribe if they want to keep their verified status intact.

However, not all of them obliged. Some paid and some did not. Those who did not subscribe, on Friday, were stripped of their blue tick badge. Now, the blue tick, over the years, has become a way for people to deem the account as verified and authentic. With this new Twitter Blue system, anyone can pay and get a verified blue tick.

But wait, that is not it. In a surprise turn of events; most celebrities, politicians, and others mysteriously got back their blue ticks on Sunday. While it was largely agreed that those with over a million followers were given back their verification badges, there was something off about the whole thing.

When one would click on the blue tick badge for these accounts, the following is the text you see. “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”

However, many users including Omar Abdullah, Nidhi Razdan, MIT, and others have publicly claimed that they have not paid Twitter for the blue tick. In fact, Twitter also awarded blue ticks to accounts of Sushant Singh Rajput, Sidharth Shukla, Michael Jackson, and many other dead celebrities and said that they have verified and subscribed to Twitter.

Many influential users of the platform called out Twitter for falsely claiming that they paid for the blue tick and demanded the platform to be honest about when, why, and how they award their verification badges.

China to test 3D printing on moon

China Daily on Monday reported that the country is exploring ways to test 3D printing technology to construct buildings on the moon. This comes after China hints at seriously working on a lunar habitation program. The Asian country plans to land an astronaut on the moon by 2023. In 2020, the Chang’e 5, brought back the first lunar soil samples for testing. China will launch the Chang’e 6, 7, and 8 missions soon.

Google Play suffers global outage

On Tuesday, several Android users reported trouble downloading apps on the Google Play Store. Both the web and the app versions of the app were inaccessible. The issue seemed to be for select users only. Some were able to update apps that were already installed but did not install any new apps on their devices.

ChatGPT faces scrutiny

Policymakers across continents are repeatedly raising concerns over OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its use of private data. While there is a fear of AI taking over a maximum of human jobs in the future, primary concerns at the moment are privacy and intellectual property rights.

Several consumer protection bodies in the European union and America have called for an investigation into the tech. The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), an umbrella group for 46 consumer organisations from 32 countries, has voiced its worries to authorities recently.