In 2017, Twitter had stopped verifying any of its users.
New Delhi: Social media platform, Twitter has come under questions for violating its own self-imposed ban of not “verifying” any user, a ban that it had invoked on itself in November 2017. Several users, who reached out to The Sunday Guardian, claimed that despite the official ban on verification, individuals were being verified.
A verified account or a “blue tick” account was conceptualised by Twitter to identify that the Twitter account was a genuine account and it was mostly given to well established and known politicians, celebrities, thinkers, experts and journalists of long standing. However, soon it became a status symbol, a symbol, which users argue is still being given on the basis of subjective bias of those officials in Twitter India who are entrusted with the authority to award the blue tick. The Sunday Guardian is not citing the names of the accounts that have been verified post the November 2017 ban, which include leaders, journalists and others who call themselves “influencers”.
The Sunday Guardian also reached out to Twitter for their response on how the verification was taking place despite officially it being on hold, whether Twitter was implementing a “biased policy”, as alleged by users when it comes to verifying users. It was alleged that some users, who have few followers and are less active, were verified when compared to other users who have more followers and are more active, whether Twitter has any standard policy that it uses to decide on whom to verify and whom not to and lastly was Twitter politically biased as some users, including well read journalists and commentators have claimed to the newspaper.
In its response, a Twitter spokesperson said, “Twitter is committed to the principles of openness, transparency and impartiality. Our product and policies are never developed nor evolved on the basis of political ideology. Our public verification process is currently closed. In the recently concluded Indian General Elections, we worked with Indian political parties across the board to verify candidates, elected officials, and relevant party officials whose accounts will be active in the public conversation. To be clear, the parties themselves select the accounts for verification and then we review these accounts to ensure they meet our verification standards. We verify these accounts to empower healthy election conversations and to provide confidence that these public figures are who they claim to be”. A Twitter official told The Sunday Guardian that verification was being done on the basis of requests that came from “organisations”. They did not clarify on the identity of these organisations or the identity of the individuals whose names were forwarded by these organisations.
However, as shared by users and reviewed by The Sunday Guardian, individuals across spectrum, who cannot be classified as politicians, were verified in India and across the world even after November 2017.
“I have a problem as it smacks of preferential treatment. Why is one account of a ‘teacher’ verified, while that of the other is denied, despite them being equal in their social media presence? Why are some people still being verified when Twitter claims that it has stopped the verification process?”, a Twitter user who is seen as right-leaning said while requesting anonymity lest his account is blocked or “meddled with” .
In April this year, popular digital media platform, Mashable released an article which claimed—backed with evidence—that Twitter was verifying accounts. The article termed the “verification pause” as bogus.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Karissa Bell, the journalist who wrote the report on Mashable, said, “They are pretty open about the fact that they are still verifying new accounts, they just don’t make verification requests publicly accessible.”
When Bell had reached out to Twitter for its response, the social media giant told her that “they continue to verify select accounts, without offering specifics on how many accounts it’s verifying”.
In the past, Twitter India has been accused of using too much subjectivity and leaving things in the hands of its employees in India, rather than letting its much touted “algorithm” to decide on whom to verify and whom not to, blocking certain accounts and “manipulating” trends.
As a result of this, in March, a Parliamentary panel headed by BJP MP Anurag Thakur, who is now a minister in the Cabinet, had directed Twitter executives to ensure they did not indulge in bias or politically motivated practices. These directions were communicated to Colin Crowell, global vice president of public policy of Twitter, who had deposed before the Parliamentary committee headed by Thakur in a meeting that had lasted three-and-a-half hours. The meeting took place after a complaint was submitted to the panel alleging an “anti-right wing” bias on Twitter. Crowell had appeared in front of the Parliamentary committee after Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey and other higher officials refused to appear citing “short notice”.
On 8 February in a blog titled “Setting the record straight on Twitter India and impartiality”, Crowell had said that its employees in India were not the ones making enforcement decisions with regard to its policies and refuted claims that Twitter was biased against accounts from a particular political ideology.