How Twitter's blue checkmark validates bullshit

Stephen H. Provost is the author of “Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump,” a look at how the modern media and Trumpism feed off of each other. It’s available on Amazon.

There’s been a lot in the news lately about the manipulation of social media, and about sites’ reluctance to take strong action against it.

As I wrote recently, I’ve been off social media for some time now. But there was a time when I was active on Facebook, and — although I never cared for the platform — had a nominal presence on Twitter.

So, rather than present another account of how Russians or other political trolls are using social media to warp the truth, I thought I’d provide a more specific example of how the sites themselves enable those trolls.

It’s called the blue checkmark.

According to Twitter, “the blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account is of public interest and authentic.”

Back when I was on Twitter, I applied for one of these badges, because I thought my account contained material of public interest, and I knew it was authentic. My application was denied, doubtless because I didn’t have enough followers and wasn’t widely enough known.

That bothered me because it confirmed what I’d always thought about the site: that it was basically a popularity contest that had nothing to do with the public interest or authenticity.

This was confirmed today, in a Newsweek article that quoted Fox News analyst Brit Hume as defending a colleague’s work verifying an article about Donald Trump. The content of that article is shocking (if unsurprising), but it’s not the point here.

Fake authority

The point is that Hume was responding on Twitter to a tweet by one Steve Milloy, someone I’ve never heard of who describes himself as “perhaps the most influential climate science contrarian.” This is a guy who says second-hand smoke isn’t dangerous and climate change is a hoax: In other words, he’s made his name by saying “science is bullshit.”

I’m sure that Steve Milloy’s never heard of me, either. I’m also reasonably sure that more people have heard of him than know me from Sasquatch. But this isn’t about me. I’m off Twitter and have no skin in this game. But I’d be willing to wager that a number of bona fide climate scientists on Twitter don’t have blue checkmarks, even though they can run rings around Steve Milloy’s bullshit anti-science rhetoric. And that’s a problem because he becomes known as an authority on something he knows nothing about, because of that insidious blue checkmark.

Some people who have the checkmark deserve it. Hume, for example, is a career journalist who’s covered Washington for decades. He’s a conservative, but that shouldn’t matter. The fact is, he’s a professional. He gets a blue checkmark. No problem there. But so does Steve Milloy.

And that’s a big problem.

Trading credibility for popularity

The upshot is that Twitter thinks is in the “public interest” to validate the account of some jerk spewing false information that could get people killed. If we believed this guy, we might as well go around trying to inhale second-hand smoke and go back to using lead-based gasoline.

The problem with the blue checkmark is that, but designating some accounts as being “of public interest and authentic,” Twitter is endowing them with a measure of authority they may or may not deserve. Should people really view Steve Milloy as an authority on anything? How is this in the public interest? And how is his denial of climate science “authentic”?

Yes, people have a right to hold false opinions and a right to share those opinions, no matter how damaging they may be. But Twitter is under no obligation to validate those opinions by granting them an air of authority via a blue checkmark — and it shouldn’t. Doing so is not only highly irresponsible, it verifies something else: That Twitter isn’t about truth, it’s about popularity.

That’s no surprise, but just in case anyone out there was still wondering, it’s yet more evidence that Twitter creates more problems than it’s willing to solve.