By Matt Chapman
Verification for social media has become a hot topic recently. Ever since X’s new owner, Elon Musk, decided that he would be the first to jump and make verification on the platform a subscription feature. For just over $80 per year, you can prove to your audience you are who you say you are.
This will come as a mighty surprise to some, celebrities up until this time had Twitter verification free of charge. It gave them a bunch of features you don’t get as a mere mortal on the platform. Up in arms, there are a number of celebrities also refusing to part ways with the cash, including Chrissy Teigen, LeBron James, and Jack Black, the latter stating that he was embarrassed by the check and it’s “not cool” to pay for it. Although at the time of writing this, all three were still verified on the platform.
The annoying thing is, now that Elon has set the precedent, others have started to swiftly follow. Meta is now charging for verification on its platform. Fear of impersonation is making people quickly add this to their annual bill of “being an artist”. But as a smaller artist, in a niche industry, should you be worried? Is verification becoming a thing of the past?
Verification processes
I wanted to quickly run through this aspect because verification differs depending on the platform you use and this plays an important part in whether or not you choose to verify. X have a very slim verification for those who are not political: got the money? Have a badge. Whereas Meta, who own Facebook and Instagram are a bit more robust and still run the document verification.
This, for me, makes all the difference. But there are still other things we need to consider.
Verification plays an important role on the internet.
Advancing technologies mean we always have to be vigilant. For me, there is always a worry about false information, now with the rise in deepfakes, you have to be extra careful of not just written content but audio and visual, too. But verification on social media platforms comes with associated costs. Costs that up until now, the platform has absorbed. Twitter is in a unique position, in that they were losing money. They had to change their business model and they took the easiest route – making a paid-for platform that gives you an extra, visible benefit. FOMO.
However, keeping up with the ever changing face of celebrities on the internet is difficult. A massive amount of people need to share they are legitimate, from journalists, through to politicians, the sources of news and current affairs are of importance. We need to know they are real. But these people change, removing and adding blue ticks on the thousands of politicians and journalists globally is time consuming – the UK, in 2022, had 4 different prime ministers, with 20 different cabinet ministers.
The people I have mentioned, though, have one thing in common. They all have to be seen as a source of truth, they share news and updates about a countries affairs. For non-political beings, do we need such assurances? Do we need to be verified?
I don’t think so.
Costs aside, what do you gain from being a verified person on a platform? Yes it reduces the amount of people trying to steal your identity on the internet, but then this problem has always existed. Anyone, for example, could create a fake website about you. It doesn’t take a genius to make something like that on a seemingly legitimate domain and out-rank you on search results. Does your website need to be verified? Yes, there are costs associated with this too, but it still hasn’t stopped people from doing it.
Impersonation has been around for much longer than the internet, the internet just makes it a little bit easier for us to do it. Anyone can do it. The larger you are, the more important verification might be, but your follower count should be the biggest giveaway as to whether you are legitimate or not. Especially at the LeBron James level of notoriety.
There are also many other things you can do to verify your social media, outside of the platform, so you make it more legitimate. For example, having songs on Spotify and associating those platforms with your social media, using your website to share your legitimate handles, posters, flyers, and gigs are all great places to verify your social media handles – all without the blue ticks.
The biggest two fights against impersonation are common sense and real life and perhaps the removal of verification will help us bring back some of these things. In the modern age, we rely too much on other people telling us what’s real and what’s not instead of researching it ourselves.
One final point, who does cover the costs of verification?
As I mentioned, up until now social media platforms have been responsible for the verification and upkeep of the system. Politicians, journalists, artists, and businesses are all begging for a blue tick to show legitimacy and it comes at a cost to the network itself. But, I don’t think it’s for the social network to be the source of the truth here. They should not be deciding who gets verified and who doesn’t.
We have mechanisms in place, particularly in the UK, that can identify legitimate corporations, politicians, and journalists. We have a source of truth. It’s the House of Commons, it’s the Companies House Registrar, and for artists, it’s the label.
A future that relies on social media verification needs to work hand in hand with the current verification methods we have. For example, a new politician shouldn’t be waiting for verification from X; the power and costs should be taken on by the House of Commons. A business that is verified on Companies House should also be verified on social media, and finally, the truth about verified artists should be controlled by record labels.
This reduces, but does not remove, the amount of stress upon the social media and puts the onus on businesses and governments to ensure a continued level of legitimacy. Verification should exist, but if you are a small, niche, singer, it’s not something that should be at the top of your priority list. You are small enough to be the controller of truth, and sometimes, I wonder if that makes things a lot easier to handle.