So this week's episode of Internet Hate Machine, it's all about a coordinated impersonation campaign on Twitter where trolls from four Chance started fake Twitter accounts meant to mimic black women. They used stolen pictures and set up accounts using really bad a A V like bad impersonations of black women on Twitter to make it seem like black feminists were
promoting a campaign to end the holiday Father's Day. In reality, these people from Fortune we're trying to exploit and drive a wedge between communities of black and white feminists online to cause confusion and chaos and basically make all feminists look bad and look like folks whose issues could not be taken seriously. Now, this situation really shows the implications
of impersonation on social media platforms like Twitter. In this case, impersonation was being used to destabilize online communities and in
an attempt to derail them. So and Father's Day was kind of a niche example, but we also talked about some other examples, like white supremacists using Twitter at a pope is as Black Lives Matter activists in order to call for looting and violent during protests back in and like Russian Assets and personating black people to try to derail the presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, which I know is something that I reference a ton
because to me, it's one of those big, glaring examples of exactly what happens when online destabilization tactics like impersonation are not taken seriously. And the people who run platforms, they knew this was a thing, and yet they pretty much did nothing. They did not make it harder to use impersonation as a tactic to cause chaos and destabilize things, And the choice to do nothing pretty much allowed it to be used on a bigger and bigger scale that
could be used to impact more and more people. You know, this is a tried and true thing when it comes to online harms. The harm starts with people who are most marginalized. Nothing is done, and then it's everyone's problem. And the women who were impacted by destabilization tactics online like and Father's Day, we're super vocal about what they were experiencing. They had been talking about the hor ms
of impersonation online for a while. And I just think that someone with power, that someone with the power to do something or make a change, really should have listened and taken them seriously because we might not be where we are today. So while recording that episode on end Father's Day, Elon Musk had just announced a plan to really blow up verification via Twitter Blue subscriptions. Essentially, if people paid eight dollars for Twitter Blue, they'd get a
blue checkmark verifying them. Elon Musk tweeted that this was going in democratize Twitter power to the people, he tweeted. Initially, it seems like the plan to prevent impersonation was to introduce a separate official badge that Twitter said would be applied to government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers,
and some public figures. But then Musk quickly changed his mind and killed the official badge only a few hours after it was introduced and rolled out, and so when paid verification did launch, it did so without that official badge. So basically, when you clicked on a blue check mark, it would tell you whether that account was verified because they were a public figure, you know, like they had been verified before, or if they had been verified because
they subscribed to Twitter Blue and paid eight dollars. But there wasn't really a way to determine that just from looking at tweets and a feed, you would need to actually click into that profile on that beach to determine whether or not that blue check was because somebody is who they say they are, or because somebody had eight dollars to spend. And this seemed like a weird, potentially disastrous move on a platform where we already know impersonation
is a big problem. And just a few days after our episode on End Father's Day and Twitter Impersonation aired, the full implications became very clear. It was a disaster. Letting anyone pay eight dollars to appear to be a verified user was pretty chaotic, and it showed this past week because users began creating fake accounts impersonating brands, athletes, and officials. Here's just a brief rundown of what we saw on Twitter. Somebody in per snated basketball player Lebron
James and announced that he was requesting a trade. A spoof Nintendo account tweeted an image of Mario giving us the finger. And a really interesting example is the pharmaceutical
company Eli Lake that makes insulin for people's diabetes. A verified Eli Lily account tweeted insulin is now free, which forced the real Eli Lily to apologize for the misleading tweet because insulin is not free, and it kind of is an interesting thing watching a healthcare company clear up the misconception that oh, no, no, no, don't worry our life saving insulin that people actually need to live will
never be free. Don't worry about that in correct, And all of this led to Eli Lily stuck plummeting amidst all the chaos. Now, look, I am obviously not losing sleep over corporations and brands like Eli Lily losing money or jeopardizing their brand safety. I don't really care about that.
But something that we learned really clearly from conversations around impersonation during the end Father's Day campaign is that even though these trolls were trying to destabilize feminist spaces online, they did it in ways that we're kind of jokey or over the top, like over the top twezza about why we need to end Father's Day red as kind of funny, and it made it easy to laugh at the whole thing and easy to just cast the whole
thing off as a joke or a troll. The very serious nature of bad actors being so easily able to hijack and to stabilize online discourse was kind of lost and how absurd the whole thing was. Like, I remember actual tech journalists writing about end Father's Day as just this big jokey troll, and I'm worried that we have not really learned a lot, and that we're still talking about the threats posed by an impersonation as a big joke.
And yeah, of course I think it's pretty funny to see Mario giving me the finger, or to see a fake George Bush tweeting at fake Tony Blair about war crimes. Of course, I'm only human. But let's keep in mind that this ship will be funny before it becomes very
very serious. For instance, Jason Kessler, the white supremacist behind the twenties and Team Unite the Right march on August seventeen in Chlottesville, Virginia, which left protester Heather Higher dead and dozens other injured, was able to pay eight dollars to get verified via Twitter blue this week. You might recall that Jason Kessler, back in twenties seventeen was verified on Twitter, and when people were like, hey, Twitter, why
are you verifying white supremacist Jason Kessler. The company responded not by taking away his verification, but by pausing verification altogether for almost four years. Twitter set in a statement back then verification was meant to authenticate identity and voice, but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance. We recognize that we have created this confusion
and need to resolve it. We have paused all general verifications while we work, and we'll be back to report soon. So obviously it's not like the old verification worked perfectly. You know, it wasn't super clear if verification was meant to be about preventing impersonation like they said in their statement, or an endorsement. And paradoxically, Twitter has taken verification away as a kind of punishment for breaking the terms of service.
They did this to extremist right wing troll my Loganopolis, after he tweeted at somebody quote you deserve to be harassed, and so I note, we're actually doing an entire episode about Milo and the harassment campaign that he led against actor Leslie Jones that eventually got him permanently booted from the platform next week. So definitely check it out if
you want to know more about Milo. But in addition to Jason Kessler, other extremist accounts shelled out eight dollars for verification, like the account lives of TikTok, which is known for leading dangerous harassment campaigns against just regular people and architect of the idea of the alt right, who
was also famous for being punched in the face. White supremacist Richard Spencer, is now verified through purchasing Twitter Blue So I think it really raises the question of what verification is meant to mean and do you really want to have hateful extremists be verified with a blue check that very well may allow them to successfully build up
their platform to spread that level of extremism. And let's not forget that all of this is happening just a few days after an election where all the races are still yet to be called. Letting folks spend eight dollars to verify their account while votes are still being counted
could have very bad results. A verified account impersonating Arizona candidate for governor Carrie Lake tweeted that she had won her race even before that race had been called, and now MPR is even advising their journalists to stop giving out their Twitter handles on air, but to not outright delete their Twitter accounts because someone could just pay eight dollars to impersonate them. So this was obviously a disaster, and only a few days after rolling out Twitter Blue,
Twitter renounced they were pausing it. And I think it really demonstrates what's really at stake here. Twitter is such a different kind of social media platform. I think it's one of the most important and powerful platforms in terms of getting news out there quickly. You know, Facebook and Instagram don't really allow for news to travel as quickly
or efficiently as a platform like Twitter does. You know, there's a reason why folks like Donald Trump and my Loganopolis were Twitter super users, and why when they were kicked off of Twitter there reached an engagement in stock really plummeted. You know, there's a reason why President Biden uses Twitter to announce new updates, not Tumbler, and it's because Twitter is uniquely powerful. I also just think that it being a text based platform is really important to
why it's such a unique platform. You know, you don't really need to be camera ready or off the cuff engaging to show up on Twitter the way that you might need to on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. For the barriers are just different to participating, which invites folks to show up there more. And I think that's why you see it as a place where journalists and academics
and researchers and activists all show up. So my opinion about what's going on with Twitter is that I think Elon Musk is deeply invested in destabilizing Twitter as a source where people can build power and build a voice. And I think that he's specifically doing this to curry favor with extremists and right wing types who have rightly clocked this kind of potential for power building on Twitter
as a threat. You know, Twitter has been used successfully to build movements that call lout of institutions and the powerful. We've seen movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter explode on platforms like Twitter that lead to powerful people having to face actual accountability. We've seen journalists use Twitter to hold people accountable and marginalized people who might not have had the easiest time building power or a voice, and traditional spaces have been able to build up platforms
on Twitter. Like Twitter, it's kind of our domain as marginalized people. And so it is not surprising to me that Twitter has been this battleground for the culture wars, and because we are winning, I think Elon Musk is wanting to blow the whole thing up. What's really fascinating to me is how Elon Musk has been able to frame this as him, you know, trying to stick it to the elites and look out for the little guy, like a literal billionaire is trying to convince us that
he is not one of the elites. Today, Elon Musk tweeted, as Twitter pursues the goals of elevating the citizen journalist, media elite will try everything to prevent that from happening. Mainstream media will still thrive, but increased competition from citizens will cause them to be more accurate as their oligopolie on information is disrupted. And honestly, we have already seen
how well that worked out this week. It wasn't with more accurate content flooding Twitter, but with scams and impersonations running wild. And let's be real, Elon Musk can say that he's for the little guy and against the media elite. But what he's really against is journalists who dig into
his companies and his practices. You know, this is the same Elon Musk who has gone to war with journalists for reporting critically about Tesla, has cracked down on his own employees for talking about unionization efforts, and has even asked his own customers to not speak critically about Tesla's on social media. So much for Elon Musk being the self proclaimed free speech absolutist, And it does kind of feel like we're watching the implosion of the platform in
real time. Elon told Twitter staff, or what's left of them, because so many of them have resigned, that bankruptcy is not out of the question for Twitter. And if we do lose Twitter, I can't help but mourn because I know this will be a loss for black folks and women and lgbt Q folks and trans folks who have been able to successfully use the platform to build movements and enact real, meaningful change. Despite all that, I am heartened.
But what I know to be true that Elon Musk and his band of sick athans and all of his billions of dollars will never be more powerful than us and our voices. So, whether it's on Twitter or some other platforms, I know that will always endure. Internet Hate Machine is a production of cool Zone Media. More podcasts from cool Zone Media, check out our website cool zone media dot com, or find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.