Thread by @Profdilipmandal

Thread: Earlier process of allotting Twitter #blueTick/verification was unequal, hierarchical, arbitrary & anti-democracy. This is not a private company’s affair alone. It affects our public discourse, opinion making process and the kind of governments we form. Read entire thread

The blue tick verification is/was a badge of honour Twitter gives to only some of the accounts, out of its several million users. Those lucky few and honoured accounts are known as verified accounts. (Let’s hope that @elonmusk will purge it)

We can call these blue tickers an exclusive club of Twitter users, who stand on a pedestal and oversee from their rarefied, verified lens large swathes of masses, ordinary teeming millions, who have to be shepherded with their wisdom and opinion.

It was such a sought-after thing on social media that Twitter India officials were often pestered for it. Former managing director of Twitter India operations, Manish Maheshwari, had to announce on his Twitter bio that “he has no power to give blue tick!”

Blue ticks are antithetical to internet equality: The promise of early internet was that it will democratise public conversation and give every user a level-playing field. Early users of Internet can recall those days.

Those were the days of AOL and geocities dot com sites, and I must admit that I observed with awe how almost anybody could have her or his own website or an account on a social media platform and say whatever she or he likes.

Journalist Ann Cooper wrote a paper in @CJR Columbia Journalism Review on how everyone was a journalist now and the question was not ‘who is a journalist, but who is doing journalism’. For Cooper, anyone with an internet connection could do journalism.

She saw that as ‘the tent getting bigger’. It is true that the tent has grown bigger over the years, but the promise of level-playing field has not been kept. Blue tick is one of the symptoms of that malice.

It is a travesty to the equality principle because Blue Tick changes the power dynamics in a conversation between a verified and a non-verified account.

Blue ticks are hierarchical: This badge was intended to create a hierarchy in the social media as only a chosen few have it and the majority don’t. It is exactly how knowledge of Sanskrit created a caste hierarchy centuries ago.

The stated purpose of blue tick badge is to verify the identity of the user. Going by that standard, it should be given to anyone who can prove her or his identity. But this was not how it worked. (@elonmusk is thankfully changing the old system.)

Twitter segregates the users into two categories: some are opinion-shapers, while others are followers. This is a model of two-step communication. It does not stop non-blue tick accounts from starting conversations, but it’s very difficult for them to get enough traction.

It was almost impossible for these non-verified users to generate a critical momentum that is required to get their hashtags figured in the trend list. For a trend to reach the top, it’s a prerequisite that it first surfaces in the list.

Blue ticks are arbitrary and discriminatory: @jack and @paraga run Twitter never disclosed the criteria for verifying an account. Since the process of giving blue ticks was opaque, it caused doubts in the minds of many users regarding its fairness. (Elon is making it transparent)

In 2017, Twitter announced that the verification process would be put on hold. But it has never really stopped verifying accounts. Since there was no set procedure for verification, social structures like caste, region and religion started playing a role, even involuntarily.

That is why SCs, STs, OBCs and even Muslims were demanding that their accounts should be verified.

Blue ticks were creating ghettos: As most of the verified accounts tend to follow or retweet only other verified accounts, a bubble is being created where only blue tick verified accounts shape the conversations while others just like and follow them!

Twitter gives an option to verified accounts to see notifications only from verified accounts. This creates an echo-chamber where these verified accounts hear only certain voices. (This must change.)

It creates a sort of ‘Davos effect’ – the snow-capped Alps where the rich and the powerful meet and network with each other once a year. Twitter too is merely reproducing the existing power and social domination structures.

Implications for democracy: Blue tick verification also has implications for a democracy like India because a lot of conversations are happening on social media and public opinion is also formed and shaped here. This is not a private company’s affair alone.

It affects our public discourse and the kind of governments we form. We must think hard about this. We are a late entrant to the ongoing worldwide debate on the role of social media in democracy.