When Elon Musk decided he wanted to buy Twitter, he had grand plans for its future. One of these is the desire to authenticate all human users on the platform (i.e., give every single user a blue check beside their name). However, one American journalist thinks this is a bad idea.
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Elon Musk pauses and looks down as he speaks during a press conference at SpaceX's Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on February 10, 2022.
Columbia University's Bruce Shapiro (who serves as the executive director of the university's Dart Center for Journalism) says that Musk's take on free speech is a "primitive libertarian notion" of it. He, of course, refers to the Tesla CEO's plan to make Twitter the world's "digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," as reported by ZDNet.
Shapiro furthers by saying that the Tesla CEO's idea of free speech is giving freedom to anyone who has the loudest voice and the resources/drive to shut everybody else up. He claims that this is more of a "bullying model" which ends up turning Twitter into a place for "jeering culture wars," as well as one that suppresses "more reasoned voices."
The aforementioned journalist made these claims in a recent guesting on ABC Radio.
But Shapiro is not the only one who has a horse in the race. As per the original ZDNet report, authenticating all humans on Twitter is something similar to the Australian government's plan to combat trolling with the so-called Anti-Trolling Bill.
With every human user on Twitter authenticated, nobody will be truly anonymous. You can basically sue anybody who you deem has defamed you in any way, because their real identity is bared out there for all to see due to the blue check mark.
Even Twitter itself has raised concerns about the Australian bill, saying that it could have troubling effects on user privacy and would be terrible for minority communities, specifically the LGBTQIA who use anonymity to raise concerns about important matters (via ZDNet).
Elon Musk has not commented on this issue yet.
Why Does Elon Musk Want To Authenticate Human Twitter Users In The First Place?
In a report by Fortune, the multi-billionaire's reason for wanting this is simple: get rid of bots and spam accounts that have been plaguing the platform for years. By doing so, this will discourage anyone who might want to build a bot or troll army for any reason.
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The Twitter logo is seen on a phone in this photo illustration in Washington, DC, on July 10, 2019.
But then again, critics like Bruce Shapiro are sounding the alarm regarding the implications of this ruling. They say it contradicts the Tesla CEO's desire to make Twitter a free speech haven by forcing anonymous whistleblowers to reveal their identity, which can endanger their lives. This is even more pronounced if the said whistleblower lives under an authoritarian regime, among others.
Another potential reason is stopping bots from doing things like monitoring crypto tweets to steal the contents of crypto wallets. Either way, the polarizing business mogul's plans for the social media giant are laid bare for all the world to see.
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Written by RJ Pierce
