Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she is waiting to hear if government agencies are exempt from Musk’s new verification plans.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“It’ll be a total dog’s breakfast if anyone can impersonate any individual,any agency,particularly when we expect it to be an official agency or voice of government,” she said. “I had read and will seek verification that government agencies will be exempted from having to pay for the subscription,but that has not yet been clarified.”
Twitterbegan rolling out its plans to offer a blue verification tick on Sunday (AEST) to anyone for $US7.99 ($12.40) a month. Musk,the founder of electric car giant Tesla and Twitter’s new owner,said that people with existing blue ticks who declined to pay would lose them within a couple of months. The paid blue-tick service is not yet available in Australia,but is expected within days.
“If the first week of the chief twit’s tenure is any indication,I think they have a bumpy ride ahead of them,” Inman Grant said at Senate Estimates on Tuesday,referring to Musk. “It’s said that content moderation is not rocket science,but in some ways,it’s much more complex and nuanced than that.”
In response to questions from Senator Hanson-Young,Inman Grant said the authentication factor was created to prevent impersonation and protect high-profile people from abuse.
“If you make it a pay-for-play type of proposition,it turns that whole justification for having such a system on its head,” she said. “It’s simply paying for a subscription service that not only will not provide those protections,but can open the platform up to much more malfeasance,impersonation,and fake accounts and possibly with state-sponsored information operations.”
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Twitter’s plans,which coincided with widespread layoffs, have increased concerns about the spread of disinformation during major political and social events. The company has delayed the change until after the US midterm elections this week.
Twitter’s current verification system was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts belonging to celebrities and politicians. Twitter had about 423,000 verified accounts before the overhaul.
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