It seems that chaos is pervading Twitter, following the recent decisions related to removing the blue mark from accounts that did not commit to paying the amounts incurred for the continued existence of that mark, in addition to dropping the slogan “funded by the government” and “belonging to the state of China” from many accounts of international media organizations. .
Fears of impersonation of persons or known page names to spread misleading information are high, especially since the absence of the blue mark will put the Twitter audience in the dilemma of believing what is published, which may gradually lose the platform’s audience’s trust.
One of the reasons why the platform resorted to authentication marks in the first place is to ensure that it avoids falsifying facts or impersonating pages that represent important institutions and people with influence, but its recent decisions may return this problem to square one.
Drop a government-funded slogan
Among the accounts that “Twitter” dropped the “government-funded media” label:
- Accounts of the National Public Radio “NPR” in the United States.
- and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation “CBC”.
- The “China State Media” tag was also removed from the accounts of the new Chinese news agency, Xinhua.
In an interview with the BBC last week, billionaire Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, said the social media platform was trying to be “accurate” and was considering revising the name.
Blue tick mess
Twitter started removing the blue tick from its user accounts and several famous people lost authentication tags such as:
- Pope Francis.
- Football star Cristiano Ronaldo.
- Pop music icon Beyoncé.
- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
- Former US President Donald Trump.
- and reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
Musk said in November that “Twitter” will receive eight dollars per month for the mark, with the aim of collecting more revenue in addition to ads, and the company offered other authentication marks in different colors, such as golden for businessmen and gray for governments, institutions and officials.
Twitter had about 300,000 users verified under the blue verification system, many of them journalists, athletes and public figures.
The verification process was used to mean that the account was verified by Twitter.
A strange paradox
Basketball star LeBron James still holds the blue flag until now.
The website, “The Verge”, which specializes in technology, stated earlier that LeBron did not pay money to keep the blue mark, after actor William Shatner, known for his role in the “Star Wars” series, complained that he was forced to pay money to keep the mark.
