Ottawa ‘assessing next steps’ on whether to pay if Twitter charges for verification
Global News
The latest proposal Elon Musk has laid out on Twitter is that anyone paying the $8-per-month subscription fee for Twitter Blue would obtain a badge.
The Canadian government is “assessing next steps” in deciding whether it will pay to keep its Twitter accounts verified, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed on Monday.
Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently purchased Twitter for $44 billion, and has since pledged to make major changes to the way the company hands out its blue checkmarks — the badge that identifies users as the real deal, not an impersonation or fake.
While few details have been publicly confirmed, the latest proposal Musk has floated on Twitter is that anyone paying the $8-per-month subscription fee for Twitter Blue would obtain a badge. What he hasn’t confirmed, however, is whether Twitter will require individuals to present proof of their identity — a key component of the current verification system.
“Given the fluidity of the situation with respect to Twitter’s policy, the government is assessing next steps on verification,” a spokesperson for PMO told Global News in a statement.
Although details emerging about Musk’s verification plan are slim, they still have disinformation experts concerned. Bad actors could abuse these markers of authenticity, they warn, particularly if the people running accounts with a high degree of public interest decide not to pay the monthly fee for a verification badge.
“The blue checkmark serves as an important verification step to show the audiences that you are actually seeing tweets from a real account and not a parody or a troll, etc.,” said Mary Blankenship, a University of Nevada researcher who looks at how misinformation spreads through Twitter.
“It’s strange that Musk does not recognize that is the purpose that the blue checkmarks serve.”
A senior government source told Global News that there “isn’t currently clarity” on Twitter’s planned verification policies — even on the price of the subscription itself, which appeared to drop from initial reports suggesting it would be $20-per-month to $8-per-month as Musk suggested in an exchange with author Stephen King on Twitter.
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