On the list of abuses around Twitter Blue, we find in particular many individuals taking advantage of the ease of having their accounts certified to spread their fake news.
This drift affects in particular the field of health.
What is certification still worth on Twitter?
Twitter Blue may be officially suspended for an indefinite period, but it does not prevent several accounts from spreading fake news, particularly in relation to health. According to the very serious The Guardianindividuals have taken advantage of the opportunity to have their account certified to make the content they publish more credible.
However, according to the British media, it is in particular anti-vaccine remarks against COVID-19 that are propagated. A major problem as winter approaches and several countries, such as China, are experiencing a resurgence of the pandemic. If Twitter has been one of the most popular social networks for spreading fake news for many years now, the certification obtained via Twitter Blue changes the situation.
Indeed, the certification badge is one more element that potentially misleads the public. How to distinguish certain authentic media from malicious peddlers when, for years, certification has been used to legitimize speeches on the blue bird social network? The solution can hardly come from Elon Musk.
Twitter Blue’s redesign seems meager compared to the scale of the problem
And it is not the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly who will say the opposite, she who lost at least 16 billion dollars while a fake account claiming to be from the company announced that the insult was going to be free. The new Twitter Blue, which would make it possible to lose their certification to accounts whose duration of existence is less than 90 days or who change their identifier, seems insufficient to solve this problem as it stands.
The scale of the moderation work, already considerable on the social network, has been made all the more important since the drastic cuts made to Twitter’s workforce since the takeover of the social network by Elon Musk. This while abbreviations and other diversions of language flourish to escape radar, including on Facebook.
Since tweets from certified accounts have a wider reach than standard accounts, anti-vaccine comments still have a bright future ahead of them. According to a Brown School of Public Health study cited by The Guardianno less than 300,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 because they did not get vaccinated.
Source : The Guardian
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