Dbrand, a Canadian company specialising in making custom cases for numerous phones and even consoles, have decided to poke fun at Twitter’s updated premium subscription and its new owner, Elon Musk. Earlier today, it had announced a new product, Verified Stickers, which costs only US$ 8 (~RM 37.60) and lets you verify anything you want with Twitter’s recognisable “Blue Check” badge – including divorce papers, as shown via a use case example provided by the company. And for good measure, a total of eight Verified stickers of varying sizes are included in each sheet.
What really hits the ball out of the park is Dbrand’s satirical copy for the product, alongside a tagline that reads, “Checkmate, Elon.” Rather than describing what they’ve written, we’ve included it below for your reading pleasure:
“What do fake news sites, bot accounts, and Linus G. Sebastian have in common?
That’s right: they aren’t verified on Twitter.
One lawsuit and $44 billion dollars later, the world’s biggest crypto scammer has the solution nobody asked for: an $8 monthly fee to rent a digital checkmark.
We just have one question: why stop at Twitter accounts? Instead of footing the bill for the worst bluff of all time, pay us once to verify whatever the f**k you want. Checkmate, Elon.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Dbrand has decided to ruffle some corporate feathers. Last year, the company was ordered by Sony to stop selling its custom PlayStation 5 due to legal reasons. However, not long after complying to the cease and desist order, the Canadian company proceeded to introduce DarkPlates 2.0 which now sports large intake vents and other cosmetic changes to differentiate it from Sony’s own design. For the cherry on top, Dbrand markets the revamped product with the tagline “Brand new design. Not illegal.”
And just in case you’ve missed it, Twitter recently updated its Twitter Blue subscription to now grant paid users with the platform’s Checkmark verification badge, without needing to fulfill any prerequisites – alongside several other premium-only features and benefits. However, its launch (albeit delayed in order to give way to US midterm elections) was met with even further backlash from users.
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One of the concerns being a new secondary checkmark situated below the username, which is intended to denote an account’s official presence. This therefore “downgrades” the original to become a badge for identifying paid users, which also ironically devalues the intended selling point of the updated subscription.
I just killed it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
The second of which being the new verification message that reads “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue,” for subscribers. Whereas for existing verified users, the original description reads “This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.” In short, the differentiating description contradicts Musk’s goal of eliminating the platform’s old “lords and peasants” approach.
Twitter has already removed the secondary checkmark three hours after it had appeared, with the new owner officially announcing the move in a reply to Marques Brownlee’s tweet. And in regards to the second complaint, Musk also promised to change the descriptions of pre-update verified users to have a more neutral tone of “Legacy Verified. Could be notable, but could also be bogus.”
(Source: Dbrand [Twitter])
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