Elon Musk plans to authenticate all real humans on Twitter just days after the sale of the social media platform has been finalized. His tweet concerning “authenticate all real humans” could mean a number of things.
Among them is to require verification for all users in a form of an ID or integrations of third-party security software. This comment allegedly stems from Elon’s hate for spam accounts or bots that use the platform for scams. Cryptocurrency bot spam is notably the “single most annoying problem” of the platform according to Elon.
The term “access” refers to guaranteeing that anyone who wants to use Twitter can do so. York claims that a system that attaches accounts to credit cards, for example, risks excluding everyone who doesn’t have one. Perhaps they are too young to have a credit card, or they have bad credit and are unable to obtain one. They may object to their credit card transactions being sold to data brokers, or they may simply prefer to use cash for cultural reasons.
Then there’s the matter of confidentiality. While many users believe they have nothing to hide, forcing them to give personally identifying information creates a single point of failure. Not only would more users have to trust Twitter not to misuse their personal information, but Twitter itself would become a much more attractive target for authoritarian governments (who may use legal demands to compel Twitter to hand over the data) or hackers seeking to steal identities. Cybercriminals have apparently pretended to be real law enforcement personnel in order to fulfill bogus government requests for data from internet companies. Twitter may guarantee to destroy the records, but that would only minimize the danger it had created.