Identification brokerage. What exactly will Twitter add to the identity verification matrix? When you sign up, and want to get those sophisticated things, they ensure you give them verifiable proof you are who you claim to be. Phone number which you can receive a text from periodically, email address which implies other people verified you, date of birth (I do not know how this helps other than then running triangulation on it from other ID providers) etc. After you do all this, they then ask you to pay to be “verified”. The status aspect on Twitter notwithstanding, it sounds like those “irrational” market outcomes.

The funny thing will be governments paying for this, when they are literally the origin of the very documents Twitter uses to verify people.