Contemporary verification systems, as one can see, are defined by engagement rates. These modes of engagement constitute a spectrum of truths that are quantified and then boiled down to verification ticks. Even though indistinguishable under the same symbol, at a closer look it becomes apparent that they span across multiple domains in cyberspace. Verification marks a user's performance deemed profitable for the system that awards verification. As there are several political economies at play, such conflation of engagements create contradictory results of blue marks.
Verification policies, now assumed to solve fake news, are only making the cyberwar environment more dense. One can think through data visualisation, provided by the Russian infamous Social Data Hub (explicitly aspiring to become Cambridge Analytica) founder - Artur Hachuyan. In the lecture, Hachuyan presents the modes of surveillance, deployed by the Russian state to calculate the networks of political influence of activists on social media. On the diagram below, you can see those who took part in the protests against Russian state in 2017. The diagram represents them (or, rather, us) as spatialised clusters of power, rendered according to the amount of engagement we managed to produce that year.
Identity verification, by making the size of the circle and the cluster bigger on the diagram above, only intensifies the amount of engagement created by political influencers, giving them more power (Wang, Pang & Pavlou, 2018). Such power we have is analysed by Emily Rosamond through her concept of ‘reputation warfare’ (Rosamond, 2020). She proposes that the paradigm of reputation capital, in which online reputation adds up relatively stable over time, has been replaced with the era of reputation volatility (Rosamond, 2020). As the increase of user engagement is prioritised, no matter how it is achieved, some platforms are not invested in upholding the reputation capital of its users and, furthermore, profit from the engagement created by the backlash against certain users (Rosamond, 2020). While Airbnb - or dark web marketplaces - are interested in all their users having high ratings, the main interest of Instagram or TikTok is the increase of engagement rather than users' high ratings. YouTube will not protect users from waves of dislikes, as they are at times even more preferable than likes as frustrated users feel more invested in interaction. In such a new era of reputation volatility, one can profit from it by deploying reputation warfare.
Following Rosamond, I propose that reputation warfare can be both offensive and defensive, and the implied goal of verification marks is not only to award but also to save the core of the engagement manufacturers - influencers and micro-influencers - from reputational volatility without alleviating its overall presence. Verification marks are, in line with stars and other forms of rating, part of the platforms’ urge to constantly calculate users’ reputation. Verification marks should be seen as a means to differentiate the users on those whose reputation the platform invests in upholding and those who could produce more engagement as a sacrifice to reputational volatility. Verified users are supposed to be subject to the reputational capital paradigm as a recognition of their consistent engagement production. This is the underlying principle behind the 'endorsement' implied in the verification tick, which, besides symbolic value, defines your position in search results and explore page, resolution for the images you can upload, and chances of your account to be deactivated. This allows me to speculate that a verification badge can be sharpened into a handy tool of cyberconflict. One might use reputation warfare as a defense against a platform attempting to eat its own spamming children and consuming everything else on its way.
In both defensive and offensive reputation warfare, users are ‘the most neglected’ yet central element (Abbate, 1999 in Matviyenko, 2021). Generally portrayed in discussions of cyberwarfare as "useful idiots", ready to spread propaganda messages for free, as was in the case of 4chan that has done free work for the Trump election campaign through "meme magic", have a significant amount of power and agency. As Svitlana Matviyenko highlights in the interview: "as much as cyberwar is led by the algorithmic means, users are essential. They function as relays. Dehumanised (for example, in a way how they often exhibit robotic behaviour; or how they are reified and treated as data; ...), users are exploited precisely through their "humanness"—desire, fear, anxiety, knowledge or the lack thereof." Humanness in cyberwar is a set of affects one can combine into the reputation warfare. Destabilised reputation economy is highly susceptible to the strong reactions of users (Rosamond, 2020). It brings forward a new figure of the cyborg, whose power lies in the human glitches and short circuits.
One can see it realised by the Russian feminist blogger Nika Vodwood, also known as NixelPixel. She became famous when back in 2016 she made a series of highly engaging cute videos, which excellently targeted non-cismale teenagers and young adults with adorable visual language and easy to grasp explanations of main concepts of intersectional feminism. Affective narratives provoked high engagement from both sympathetic and aggressive sexist audiences, continuously scaling the content across various information bubbles, which was solidified through the verification of Nika’s instagram account. Such status was successfully used by Nika very recently, when she asked her followers to support the struggle of delivery workers against Russian food delivery company Delivery Club. By spamming Delivery Club accounts with demands to pay their workers the long-overdue salary, the platform, silent for so many days of the campaign, in three days announced that they had given money to their couriers.
Verification marks, therefore, can be used as an offensive and defensive weapon in digital conflict. The militarisation of cyberspace, making most users involuntary digital combatants, implies that we can take knowledgeable action in ongoing conflicts. As we talk about pro-governmental human trolls exploiting automation as cyborgs, we must think of how we already combine our "humanness" with affective swarming in private cyber domains, simultaneously digital and analogue.
04
Reputation
Offense and
Defense
Contemporary verification systems, as one can see, are defined by engagement rates. These modes of engagement constitute a spectrum of truths that are quantified and then boiled down to verification ticks. Even though indistinguishable under the same symbol, at a closer look it becomes apparent that they span across multiple domains in cyberspace. Verification marks a user's performance deemed profitable for the system that awards verification. As there are several political economies at play, such conflation of engagements create contradictory results of blue marks.
Verification policies, now assumed to solve fake news, are only making the cyberwar environment more dense. One can think through data visualisation, provided by the Russian infamous Social Data Hub (explicitly aspiring to become Cambridge Analytica) founder - Artur Hachuyan. In the lecture, Hachuyan presents the modes of surveillance, deployed by the Russian state to calculate the networks of political influence of activists on social media. On the diagram below, you can see those who took part in the protests against Russian state in 2017. The diagram represents them (or, rather, us) as spatialised clusters of power, rendered according to the amount of engagement we managed to produce that year.
Identity verification, by making the size of the circle and the cluster bigger on the diagram above, only intensifies the amount of engagement created by political influencers, giving them more power (Wang, Pang & Pavlou, 2018). Such power we have is analysed by Emily Rosamond through her concept of ‘reputation warfare’ (Rosamond, 2020). She proposes that the paradigm of reputation capital, in which online reputation adds up relatively stable over time, has been replaced with the era of reputation volatility (Rosamond, 2020). As the increase of user engagement is prioritised, no matter how it is achieved, some platforms are not invested in upholding the reputation capital of its users and, furthermore, profit from the engagement created by the backlash against certain users (Rosamond, 2020). While Airbnb - or dark web marketplaces - are interested in all their users having high ratings, the main interest of Instagram or TikTok is the increase of engagement rather than users' high ratings. YouTube will not protect users from waves of dislikes, as they are at times even more preferable than likes as frustrated users feel more invested in interaction. In such a new era of reputation volatility, one can profit from it by deploying reputation warfare.
Following Rosamond, I propose that reputation warfare can be both offensive and defensive, and the implied goal of verification marks is not only to award but also to save the core of the engagement manufacturers - influencers and micro-influencers - from reputational volatility without alleviating its overall presence. Verification marks are, in line with stars and other forms of rating, part of the platforms’ urge to constantly calculate users’ reputation. Verification marks should be seen as a means to differentiate the users on those whose reputation the platform invests in upholding and those who could produce more engagement as a sacrifice to reputational volatility. Verified users are supposed to be subject to the reputational capital paradigm as a recognition of their consistent engagement production. This is the underlying principle behind the 'endorsement' implied in the verification tick, which, besides symbolic value, defines your position in search results and explore page, resolution for the images you can upload, and chances of your account to be deactivated. This allows me to speculate that a verification badge can be sharpened into a handy tool of cyberconflict. One might use reputation warfare as a defense against a platform attempting to eat its own spamming children and consuming everything else on its way.
In both defensive and offensive reputation warfare, users are ‘the most neglected’ yet central element (Abbate, 1999 in Matviyenko, 2021). Generally portrayed in discussions of cyberwarfare as "useful idiots", ready to spread propaganda messages for free, as was in the case of 4chan that has done free work for the Trump election campaign through "meme magic", have a significant amount of power and agency. As Svitlana Matviyenko highlights in the interview: "as much as cyberwar is led by the algorithmic means, users are essential. They function as relays. Dehumanised (for example, in a way how they often exhibit robotic behaviour; or how they are reified and treated as data; ...), users are exploited precisely through their "humanness"—desire, fear, anxiety, knowledge or the lack thereof." Humanness in cyberwar is a set of affects one can combine into the reputation warfare. Destabilised reputation economy is highly susceptible to the strong reactions of users (Rosamond, 2020). It brings forward a new figure of the cyborg, whose power lies in the human glitches and short circuits.
One can see it realised by the Russian feminist blogger Nika Vodwood, also known as NixelPixel. She became famous when back in 2016 she made a series of highly engaging cute videos, which excellently targeted non-cismale teenagers and young adults with adorable visual language and easy to grasp explanations of main concepts of intersectional feminism. Affective narratives provoked high engagement from both sympathetic and aggressive sexist audiences, continuously scaling the content across various information bubbles, which was solidified through the verification of Nika’s instagram account. Such status was successfully used by Nika very recently, when she asked her followers to support the struggle of delivery workers against Russian food delivery company Delivery Club. By spamming Delivery Club accounts with demands to pay their workers the long-overdue salary, the platform, silent for so many days of the campaign, in three days announced that they had given money to their couriers.
Verification marks, therefore, can be used as an offensive and defensive weapon in digital conflict. The militarisation of cyberspace, making most users involuntary digital combatants, implies that we can take knowledgeable action in ongoing conflicts. As we talk about pro-governmental human trolls exploiting automation as cyborgs, we must think of how we already combine our "humanness" with affective swarming in private cyber domains, simultaneously digital and analogue.
