"X Premium" was supposed to be the opt-in version. People were supposed to prefer following those, because at least you knew they weren't bots.

He figured it would be the celebrities rushing to do it first, but it turned out the first ones were the jerks. Celebrities are already a draw to the service; asking them to pay for the privilege of bringing customers (even a token amount) was unacceptable.

The jerks, however -- the ones who were desperate to be heard and would jump at a chance to pay to look better -- were happy to pay. Then users went out of their way to avoid blue-checks.

I suppose it's hard to test public reaction before deploying. People are unpredictable. I sure didn't anticipate that a service whose model was "a constant stream of inanities" would get billions of users. So maybe I'm not the one to ask.

But it sure doesn't sound like Musk has any understanding of why it's popular, either.