If you are looking at an antenna on the rooftop of a large building, trying to figure out its function, you cannot see the radio waves it transmits and receives. If searching for the model didn't bring any results, it might be easier to spot the massive cable that comes with it. Following the wires in that weird quest might bring some clarity to what you are looking for. The idea behind this investigation is to approach blue verification badges as antennas and search for the information they transmit and receive in their infrastructure. Following the prevailing idea that infrastructures we rely on become visible only upon breakdown - i.e. you are highly aware there is an electricity grid in your flat only in case of a blackout, we might want to take a closer look at the short circuits of blue ticks.
Let's look at the backlash Twitter faced in 2017 after awarding an infamous American Nazi a blue tick. The corporation, which had by the time developed a strict code of awarding verification badges that had very little to do with authentication, appeals to the misunderstanding on the users' side. We know about this code not from the official Twitter accounts but from the dark web ads that propose to get verified on social media for 0.5–1 BTC (depending on the platform, 550 000–1 000 000₽ or US$7000–13000), listing items such as 'creating your Wikipedia page'
Russian darkweb marketplace ‘Hydra’,seller ‘Peace Dose’, 2020
Such code and the fact that the vast majority of authentic accounts remain unverified, as they are not considered worthy of undergoing Twitter's verification process, hints that it was not users who were confused speaking of importance. Since 2017, social media became more explicit that there is something else at stake beyond authenticity - calling it ‘notability’ or 'prominence' - a qualitative status determined through an internal process that is still opaque. Such hazy terms do not clarify what is being quantified and coded into the blue tick and the implications desired for it by the platform.
Considering that verification marks were launched over a decade ago, the simple task of their definition might seem surprisingly complicated. Such complications come from the self-evident appearance of their functions, which make verification badges appear symbolically transparent. Indeed, this seeming transparency is embedded in other parts of social media interfaces. It is well-known now that 'like,' 'share,' and other buttons that users intuitively express themselves with are meant to 'facilitate ranking, product recommendations, and data analytics', and verification marks are part of this overarching logic of data extraction (Plantin et al. 2018:297). To make such extraction possible, social media companies have to constantly downplay their role and mask behind the logic of transparency.
The companies present themselves as neutral filters and facilitators of data as a natural force, such as a liquid that can flow freely, leak, and overwhelm (Lupton, 2013). Social media platforms present data as a pre-existing natural resource, laying out there to be extracted (or mined), rather than a synthetic product manufactured by extensive infrastructure aimed at manufacturing conditions for users to surrender their information. When this process reveals itself through breakdown and friction, like in the 2017 backlash, the users, noticing the dysfunctional infrastructure, are blamed for misinterpretation. The infrastructure remains invisible.Platforms could not sustain such invisibility if the interface of this infrastructure did not conceal itself as self-evident, i.e. if the tick or a heart would present the actual metrics at play. You can start messing with such transparency, trying to imagine one symbol in place of another. Would the tick be more similar to a star or a fingerprint, a much more clear signifier of the identity verification? There feels to be a difference between criminological visual language and the god-like blessing of the verification mark.
Claiming to be based on
biometric data, verification
never uses biometric symbols
There is an actual criminological rationale tied currently to the verification systems with the new battle against fake news. Called 'rational choice theory', it states that 'when hiding behind an alias on social media platforms, people have a lower need for self-control and feel less responsible for the consequences of their actions' (Omernick and Sood 2013). Such a reductionist criminological model is indeed responsible for the omnipresent demand to provide your real name and photo before entering most cyberspaces. Nevertheless, media companies connected verification marks to the fake news only after the 2016 U.S. election, as they found themselves amid the neverending wave of scandals associated with fake news and trolling. Blue ticks were made responsible for the mitigation of fake news and trolling. Following the 2016 elections, the verification-content chain was mirrored by Facebook in a policy that to purchase 'political or issue-based advertisements would be required to verify their identities and locations', followed by the similar system from Google announced later in 2018.
Social media have been gradually piling up notions of truth, without necessarily clarifying any of them: already obscure truth as 'prominence' is now combined with the even more perplexing truth of cyberwar, fueled by the fake news scandals. The new truth produced by such an equation is a machinic Frankenstein, one can see developed in the verification policy introduced by Tinder in 2020. Tinder allowed all users to apply for a verification badge, implementing a new facial recognition service, while not changing its algorithm that floods gay searches with intrusive opposite sex results. Instead of even attempting to discuss the solution that would make all queers, especially transgender and nonbinary ones, safe, it continuously shows verified cisgender males and hetero couples searching for a unicorn to womxn with a "women only" preference. What is precisely being verified there? Such a chaotic mixture makes it hard to define what information is encoded and transmitted through the verification marks. Therefore, it might be productive to come back to the metaphor of the antenna, with which we started, and look into the wires that sustain it.
01 Verification Signals
If you are looking at an antenna on the rooftop of a large building, trying to figure out its function, you cannot see the radio waves it transmits and receives. If searching for the model didn't bring any results, it might be easier to spot the massive cable that comes with it. Following the wires in that weird quest might bring some clarity to what you are looking for. The idea behind this investigation is to approach blue verification badges as antennas and search for the information they transmit and receive in their infrastructure. Following the prevailing idea that infrastructures we rely on become visible only upon breakdown - i.e. you are highly aware there is an electricity grid in your flat only in case of a blackout, we might want to take a closer look at the short circuits of blue ticks.
Let's look at the backlash Twitter faced in 2017 after awarding an infamous American Nazi a blue tick. The corporation, which had by the time developed a strict code of awarding verification badges that had very little to do with authentication, appeals to the misunderstanding on the users' side. We know about this code not from the official Twitter accounts but from the dark web ads that propose to get verified on social media for 0.5–1 BTC (depending on the platform, 550 000–1 000 000₽ or US$7000–13000), listing items such as 'creating your Wikipedia page'.
Russian darkweb
marketplace ‘Hydra’,
seller ‘Peace Dose’, 2020
Such code and the fact that the vast majority of authentic accounts remain unverified, as they are not considered worthy of undergoing Twitter's verification process, hints that it was not users who were confused speaking of importance. Since 2017, social media became more explicit that there is something else at stake beyond authenticity - calling it ‘notability’ or 'prominence' - a qualitative status determined through an internal process that is still opaque. Such hazy terms do not clarify what is being quantified and coded into the blue tick and the implications desired for it by the platform.
Considering that verification marks were launched over a decade ago, the simple task of their definition might seem surprisingly complicated. Such complications come from the self-evident appearance of their functions, which make verification badges appear symbolically transparent. Indeed, this seeming transparency is embedded in other parts of social media interfaces. It is well-known now that 'like,' 'share,' and other buttons that users intuitively express themselves with are meant to 'facilitate ranking, product recommendations, and data analytics', and verification marks are part of this overarching logic of data extraction (Plantin et al. 2018:297). To make such extraction possible, social media companies have to constantly downplay their role and mask behind the logic of transparency.
Verification mark used on
Chinese ‘Weibo’ until 2016
The companies present themselves as neutral filters and facilitators of data as a natural force, such as a liquid that can flow freely, leak, and overwhelm (Lupton, 2013). Social media platforms present data as a pre-existing natural resource, laying out there to be extracted (or mined), rather than a synthetic product manufactured by extensive infrastructure aimed at manufacturing conditions for users to surrender their information. When this process reveals itself through breakdown and friction, like in the 2017 backlash, the users, noticing the dysfunctional infrastructure, are blamed for misinterpretation. The infrastructure remains invisible.Platforms could not sustain such invisibility if the interface of this infrastructure did not conceal itself as self-evident, i.e. if the tick or a heart would present the actual metrics at play. You can start messing with such transparency, trying to imagine one symbol in place of another. Would the tick be more similar to a star or a fingerprint, a much more clear signifier of the identity verification? There feels to be a difference between criminological visual language and the god-like blessing of the verification mark.
Claiming to be based on
biometric data, verification
never uses biometric symbols
There is an actual criminological rationale tied currently to the verification systems with the new battle against fake news. Called 'rational choice theory', it states that 'when hiding behind an alias on social media platforms, people have a lower need for self-control and feel less responsible for the consequences of their actions' (Omernick and Sood 2013). Such a reductionist criminological model is indeed responsible for the omnipresent demand to provide your real name and photo before entering most cyberspaces. Nevertheless, media companies connected verification marks to the fake news only after the 2016 U.S. election, as they found themselves amid the neverending wave of scandals associated with fake news and trolling. Blue ticks were made responsible for the mitigation of fake news and trolling. Following the 2016 elections, the verification-content chain was mirrored by Facebook in a policy that to purchase 'political or issue-based advertisements would be required to verify their identities and locations', followed by the similar system from Google announced later in 2018.
Social media have been gradually piling up notions of truth, without necessarily clarifying any of them: already obscure truth as 'prominence' is now combined with the even more perplexing truth of cyberwar, fueled by the fake news scandals. The new truth produced by such an equation is a machinic Frankenstein, one can see developed in the verification policy introduced by Tinder in 2020. Tinder allowed all users to apply for a verification badge, implementing a new facial recognition service, while not changing its algorithm that floods gay searches with intrusive opposite sex results. Instead of even attempting to discuss the solution that would make all queers, especially transgender and nonbinary ones, safe, it continuously shows verified cisgender males and hetero couples searching for a unicorn to womxn with a "women only" preference. What is precisely being verified there? Such a chaotic mixture makes it hard to define what information is encoded and transmitted through the verification marks. Therefore, it might be productive to come back to the metaphor of the antenna, with which we started, and look into the wires that sustain it.
