Twitter users anticipated a reckoning over
the weekend as the verification check marks that denoted the accounts of
celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures and organizations were set
to be removed en masse.
اضافة اعلان
That reckoning did not come.
Although Twitter took away the check mark
from some accounts, including that of The New York Times, most verified users
retained the symbols, which have long been viewed as conferring a special status
and showed that the identity of those behind the accounts had been confirmed by
the social media service. Pranks from users trying to exploit the change by
posing as a celebrity or another public figure were muted, with only a few
hoaxes spreading on the platform.
Instead, the most prominent change to
Twitter happened Monday, when the platform’s blue bird icon was replaced on
some accounts by a doge, a popular online icon of a Shiba Inu dog that has
become synonymous with Dogecoin, a type of cryptocurrency. After the change to
Twitter’s logo, the digital currency’s price shot up more than 30 percent.
The inaction around the verification check
marks showed that “Twitter has a real crisis of credibility,” said Graham
Brookie, a director at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab,
which studies online misinformation. “When they say they’re going to do a thing
right now, they haven’t proven that they are consistently doing those things.”
The shifts to the check-mark program are
part of the moves being made by Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October for
$44 billion. Last year, he said that Twitter would begin removing verification
check marks from users’ profiles unless they paid an $8 monthly fee for Twitter
Blue, a subscription service that includes the blue-and-white check mark badge
on users’ profiles.
Musk, who has said he is a champion of free
speech, did not respond to a request for comment.
Twitter had previously given the badges to
celebrities, politicians and other notable organizations or people for free as
a way to distinguish their accounts from those who sought to imitate them and
to show their identities had been confirmed. That helped Twitter because public
figures drove “a disproportionate amount of engagement” on the service and the
celebrities and politicians could post freely without fear of being
impersonated, said Lara Cohen, Twitter’s former global head of marketing and
partners.
But after Musk announced the change to
Twitter’s verification program last year, a wave of impersonation erupted. In
November, a user who had paid for a check mark through Twitter Blue posed as
pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, tweeting that it would provide free insulin
to customers. The message sent Eli Lilly’s stock tumbling. Other brands faced
similar hoaxes, forcing Twitter to pause the sign-ups for Twitter Blue.
Last month, Twitter announced it would
start removing check marks on April 1 for those who weren’t paying for the
symbols. Apart from individual users paying $8 a month, Twitter planned to
charge organizations $1,000 a month for verification that came with a gold
check mark, with a number of exceptions, according to internal documents seen by
the Times.
On Friday, some verified users began
preemptively mourning the loss of their special status by tweeting about their
final moments with a check mark and posting pictures of their profiles with
their badges. Others revamped their profiles to pose as author J.K. Rowling,
NASA, and other famous figures and organizations.
Some said they would not pay for something
they had long received free. NBA star LeBron James said in a tweet last week
that his check mark would soon disappear and that “if you know me I ain’t
paying.”
News organizations including the Times, The
Washington Post, and Politico also said they would not pay for check marks,
with some saying that the symbol no longer showed credibility and authenticity
since anyone could purchase it.
Others argued the change would level the
playing field by allowing anyone who wanted a badge to get one.
“Twitter only verifying elites and friends
of Twitter employees was wrong,” Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, said in a
tweet Sunday. “Democratizing verification for $8 was good. Treating everyone
the same is principled.”
Yet, over the weekend, almost all verified
users kept their badges, leading to questions about whether Musk would follow
through or if he was making an April Fools’ day joke.
On Saturday night, in response to a Twitter
user who pointed out that the Times had said it wouldn’t pay for verification,
Musk tweeted that he would remove the news organization’s check mark from its
account. Within an hour, the Times’ gold verification badge disappeared.
Musk said in a tweet Sunday that it was
“hypocritical” for the Times to refuse to pay for verification while running a
subscription business of its own.
A spokesperson for the Times declined to
comment on Musk’s tweets.
On Monday, some users began seeing a doge
in place of Twitter’s traditional bird logo. The doge image dovetailed with
Musk’s own dealings with Dogecoin, which he has previously tweeted his support
for. On Friday, lawyers representing Musk had asked a judge to dismiss a
multibillion-dollar racketeering lawsuit that accused the billionaire and
Tesla, his electric car company, of manipulating the cryptocurrency’s price
with his tweets.
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