Buying verification means a flawed public square
FOLLOWING Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27, the world’s richest man proposed controversial changes to the platform, tweeted out from his Twitter account.
Primarily to raise revenue, one idea was to charge $8 (R142) a month for verified status – the coveted blue tick badge next to the account handle.
Within days, the paid verification has already been rolled out in several countries, including Australia, under the Twitter Blue subscription service.
Twitter says the blue tick lets people know an account of interest is authentic. There are seven categories of “public interest accounts” – government office accounts, news organisations and journalists, and influencers.
Yet this seemingly innocuous little blue icon is far from a simple verification tool in Twitter’s fight against impersonation and fraud. In the public view, a verified status signifies social importance. It is a coveted status symbol to which users aspire, in large part because Twitter’s approval process has made it is difficult to obtain.
There’s a fundamental mismatch between what Twitter wants the blue tick to mean versus how the public perceives it.
In addition, in Twitter verifying accounts systematically, it wasn’t long before blue ticks were being handed out to bots and fake accounts.
Musk’s policy proposals may reflect his own preference for interacting with verified accounts. Despite his repeated claims of “power to the people” and breaking the “lords and peasants” system of verified versus non-verified accounts, I ran a data analysis of 1 493 of Musk’s tweets this year, and found that more than half (57%) of his interactions were with verified accounts.
Evidently, having a verified status makes one worthy of his attention.
Thus, Musk himself arguably views the blue tick as a status symbol, like everyone else (except Twitter).
Musk’s $8 blue tick proposal is not only misguided but, ironically, likely to produce even more inauthenticity and harm on the platform. A fatal flaw stems from the fact that “payment verification” is not, in fact, verification.
Twitter’s verification system is not perfect or transparent, but it did at least aspire to the kinds of verification practices journalists and researchers use to distinguish fact from fiction, and authenticity from fraud. It takes time and effort. You can’t just buy it.
Despite its flaws, the verification process largely succeeded in rooting out a sizable chunk of illegitimate activity on the platform, and highlighted notable accounts in the public interest. In contrast, Musk’s payment verification only verifies a person has $8. The problem is even worse at larger scales. It is hard enough to detect and prevent bot and troll networks from poisoning the information landscape with disinformation and spam. Now, for the low cost of $800, foreign adversaries can launch a network of 100 verified bot accounts. The more you can pay, the more legitimacy you can purchase.
To make matters worse, Musk said verified accounts who pay $8 will be granted more visibility on the platform, while non-verified accounts will be suppressed algorithmically.
He believes this will solve hate speech and fake accounts by prioritising verified accounts in search, replies and mentions. If anything, it will have the opposite effect: those with enough money will dominate the public sphere. Think Russian bots and cryptocurrency spammers.
Consider also that participating anonymously on social media has many
advantages, including safety for marginalised and at-risk groups. Punishing those who want to remain anonymous on Twitter is not the answer.
Musk’s ideas are already causing unintended consequences. Accounts with blue ticks began changing their profile handle to “Elon Musk” to parody him. In response, Musk tweeted a new policy proposal that Twitter handles engaging in impersonation would be suspended unless they specify being a “parody”. Users will not even receive a warning, as comedian Kathy Griffin and her 2 million followers discovered.
The existing Twitter system is flawed, but at least it was systematic, somewhat transparent, with some accountability. But Musk’s policy approach is tyrannical and opaque. Having abolished the board of directors, the “Chief Twit” has all the power and almost no accountability. We are left with a fragile and flawed online public square.