Under new owners, the infoosphere looks to be light-speeding back to chaotic noise. The billionaire is not a fan of meritocratic signals and prefers anyone who pays him $8 million to have their account on his social network badges with a check-mark.
It's a real joke.
Users must click on the check symbol next to the account name to verify if it is a legacy verification of actual identity or just a late stage capitalism status symbol.
There is no way to distinguish between verified and non-verified paying subscribers at the moment. It is confusing because Musk loves to troll.
He wasted no time in making fun of the information he had caused.
The screengrab is from TechCrunch.
If you sign up for the new subscription product, you will be able to see one check-marked message at a time, so long as you sign up for an $8 a month.
Tech and gaming brands, including Apple, Nintendo and Valve Software, have been targets for impersonation by Blue subscribers. The barrier to entry to Musk's chaos game is very low, so plenty more troll will follow. The new nickname for the social networking site is '$8chan'.
It is thought that by skewing the information surfaced by the platform's algorithms, it will boost the visibility of subscribers'tweets vs non-subscribers, and erode the visibility of quality information.
If genuine users are taken in by a fake that is seeking to harvest their personal information for identity theft or pointing them towards malicious websites, the risks are much higher.
Fake Twitter accounts flock to blue check mark chaos
Is it a real politician or a troll who uses the platform to spread misinformation? Take a thought for the European Union, whose reputation as a global Regulator is at risk in the Musk-Twitter Era.
The Code of Practice on Disinformation is a voluntary set of commitments and measures that platforms agree to apply with the goal of fighting misinformation online.
It's really serious. Musk's company has signed up to fight fake news.
We did as well.
If you take a look at the specifics of what the previous leadership team signed the business up for, it makes more sense to not read it.
The commitment 18 of the Code is summarized in the subscription document as:
“Relevant Signatories commit to minimise the risks of viral propagation of misinformation or disinformation by adopting safe design practices as they develop their systems, policies, and features.”
Everyone agrees that Musk's chaotic product iteration at Twitter since taking over as "Chief Twit" fits the bill for safe design practices.
Anyone else? Absolutely not.
It took Musk a long time to kill an extra layer of verification, which was a duplicate check mark and official label.
Musk responded to Brownlee, who had just spotted that the Official Badge was missing, by saying that he had just killed it. Ohhai chaos is what it is.
Musk said that the blue check would be the leveler.
Trust & safety features that come and go within a matter of days/hours/minutes, and product launches that drastically impact trust & safety, is the new normal at Musk-Twitter.
Soon after nixing the extra official label, the chief twit said as much. We will keep the things that work and the things that don't.
It's another way of Musk taking a pen to the Dis Information Code.
As they develop their systems, policies, and features, relevant signatories commit to minimize the risks of viral propagation of misinformation.
Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.
We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
It keeps getting worse, and it just got worse with the abandonment of the CISO. The FTC intervention is next.
It was a problem before Musk. The FTC fined it $150 million for misrepresenting the security and privacy of user data over a number of years. If Musk-Twitter doesn't live up to its consent decree commitments, there will be a lot of regulatory penalties.
Musk will face a blowback in the EU for thumbing his nose at the Code of Practice on Dis information. Although some EU lawmakers are calling for Musk to testify in front of the European Parliament, in the short term it is unlikely. According to the news outlet, the platform will become a threat to democracy under Musk.
The European Commission is in charge of the Code of Practice on Disinformation.
We wanted to know if the Commission had any concerns about Musk leveling the verification system. In the context of the Code of Practice, the spokesman told us, it is in contact with the social networking site.
The Code of Practice is also included in the expected respect of all EU rules.
The EU's internal market commissioner wasted no time in educating Musk on the EU's rules after he took ownership of the social network. At press time, we had not received a reply from his office on the question of whether he has any concerns about fake accounts on the social networking site.
The EU's executive may be keeping an eye on what happens in the coming hours and minutes of Musk's reign.
It could be that the Commission is keeping its powder because it is watching to see if Musk launches the product in the EU. EU users are already being exposed to confusingly labelledtweets from outside the bloc so limiting scrutiny to local product launches would miss the big picture confusion and risk letting Musk off the hook.
The EU Code of Practice on Disinformation is still a voluntary framework, so Musk violating commitments and measures that the previous leadership signed up can't attract legal sanction at the moment.
The ink on the dotted line wasn't even his to spill. If he noticed this tiny detail, Musk wouldn't feel beholden. We reached out to the micro-blogging site for comment but did not hear back.
The situation is going to change next year as the EU's new flagship digital regulatory framework, the Digital Services Act, starts to come into application for larger platforms.
Compliance with the DSA is legally binding across the EU and can carry fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover for violations. The Commission has the power to find platforms in violation of the DSA. It will be more difficult to ignore for normal companies and CEOs.
The big question for regional Internet users is whether the EU will designate a very large online platform under the DSA. The regulation looks to be one of the few checks on Musk-Twitter in core areas of democratic risk.
Who will pay the biggest price for Musk's decision to devalue credibility on social media? The billionaire lord, assuming he gets slapped with hefty fines for wreaking havoc on trust and safety, or everyone else, or the Peasants, who can do nothing but wait to find out.
It is clear that Musk's chaos is for now.
Europe schools Elon Musk that Twitter’s wings are already clipped
Will Elon Musk put Twitter on a collision course with global speech regulators?
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