• Elon Musk attracted unhealthy attention on Thursday, from stripping Pope Francis of Twitter verification, among other international celebrities.
• Twitter began the mass removal of blue ticks on Thursday, with the symbol previously signifying a verified account
• Top journalist and media houses are under pressure to prove their authenticity on Twitter.
Elon Musk attracted unhealthy attention on Thursday, from stripping Pope Francis of Twitter verification, among other international celebrities.
Elon Musk. Photo: Twitter.
Three issue dominated global news in a way that underlined the extraordinary influence of the one person–- Musk.
“Elon Musk has outsized capability to sway the news cycle,” University of Florida assistant media professor Andrew Selepak told AFP.
“Musk has quickly gone from being an innovator few knew of to a tech billionaire playboy who has almost taken the place of Donald Trump as a Twitter troll,” Selepak said.
Twitter began the mass removal of blue ticks on Thursday, with the symbol previously signifying a verified account vanishing from users including the Pope, Donald Trump and Justin Bieber.
Twitter owner Musk, who has seen his $44 billion investment in the site shrivel, had pledged to get rid of what he described as a “lords & peasants system.”
The platform had been providing free blue checkmarks to the accounts of high-profile users to show they were who they claimed to be.
Musk’s switch does away with verifying who is behind accounts, with the checks now simply indicating who has paid a monthly subscription fee.
A plan that is yet to be proven profitable or futile since some high-end celebrities have paid for the verification while others have not, voluntarily.
The move has seen top journalists like Larry Madowo and media houses such as Citizen TV receive pressure from Kenyans on Twitter to verify their accounts for authenticity.
Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart described Musk’s blue checkmarks as “receipts” rather than verification.
The removals coincided with the disappearance of “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” labels from media accounts, according to a review by AFP as of 0600 GMT Friday.
Many major outlets from Western nations, Russia, China and other countries that previously had either of those tags no longer displayed them, including NPR from the United States, China’s official Xinhua agency and RT from Russia.
The removal followed spats in recent weeks between Twitter and news organizations that had objected to those labels, saying they cast doubt on their editorial independence.
