Twitter has officially taken the verified blue checkmark away from almost every user that hasn’t subscribed to its premium Twitter Blue service. FOX Sports Radio host Doug Gottlieb believes the verified stamp is now completely worthless.
“As of now, I’m not going to buy one unless my boss tells me to do it, or somebody who says business-wise ‘This is what you need to do’,” Gottlieb said Thursday. “Nobody’s really giving me any guidance. I like Twitter. I think there’s some downside to it. I’ll be totally honest with you. There have been moments in my life where I’ve been too engaged in it and missed part of the rest of my life, my real life. And I’ve tried to do a better job.”
Gottlieb then said he received backlash from his bosses while working for CBS Sports for his Twitter interactions.
“CBS got mad at me because I would reply to people. And they’re like ‘Don’t reply to people. They don’t matter’. I was like ‘Well, I don’t know. That’s kind of the platform. It’s like an open discussion’. Their take was it just doesn’t matter,” continued Gottlieb. “Like, you’re just welcoming somebody’s comments into a conversation that don’t belong. Don’t give them the time of day and they’ll just go away. I’ll readily admit, readily admit, that some people in the media should lose the right to comment on certain things. You don’t have to comment on everything, but I do think that evening the playing field is exactly what’s happened. And I don’t think that’s what should happen. I do think some people’s word should mean more.”
Gottlieb concluded by saying that some people will discuss topics they know nothing about. He pointed to recent comments made by CBS Sports NFL analyst Phil Simms who said Tom Brady would work better as a studio analyst than a game analyst as an example.
“You can dislike it all you want, but you actually don’t know anything about our business. And this allows people in the business, when you have people with verified check marks commenting, and randoms get caught up and it just kind of gets lost in the wash.”
Gottlieb added that his favorite part about Twitter is the “sports bar” type atmosphere it can provide during large events, but said “Once you start making people pay for things, it completely changed the dynamic”.
