Twitter wants more verified users: What does it mean?

[MUSIC] So I loved Twitter, okay? Its no secret but at the same time I am very much aware of that that it has problems, it faces challenges, it is somewhat of a toxic enviroment. So what can Twitter do to serve? Just make it a little better? Right. So Twitter has been working for the past couple years to provide all these apologies and mea culpas. And say, we're gonna do better. We're gonna do better. But it never really actually changes. Right. Jack Dorsey very recently said what we're gonna do is we're going to open up verifications. They're gonna open it up, they say, to just about everybody. So the idea is, is that the fox, the trolls, a lot of these other folks that cause a lot of problems on Twitter, maybe they wouldn't be verified and it's a little bit more of a buyer beware. You wouldn't have to worry as much or maybe those folks would fall back a little bit more into the ether. They wouldn't be as persuasive or as powerful as they are now. If more people had verification. But don't they also face the problem of people conflating that badge with some sort of endorsement? Yeah. Right? How do they work around that? It's good that you mention that. So there's this guy, Jason Kessler. He was a white supremacist, and he was behind the Charlottesville march last year. Twitter gave him a a verification badge, and people flipped out. They really didn't like it because they thought that this was Twitter basically endorsing a white supremacist. And they go and they say, no, that's not what we're doing. We're just confirming the fact that Jason Gesser is Jason Gesser. They're saying no, that piece of **** is that piece of ****. Basically, right. Maybe it helps out with Accountability, I mean, that's gotta be some of the focuses to sot of pin these things, remove the anonymity to some degree, and have people be more responsable for what they do. Yeah, the only problem is that, as I started with, Twitter has been trying to clear out the toxic behavior, the negativity, the scamming, all these other nonesense on its site for years. Yes Yes. Is this something thats really going to solve the problem? I dont know. Maybe the verification is, there are people that are going to scam that and figure out ways to gain that too. And then that little check mark, that little badge becomes, right. So why did they take so long? I mean I know like you said they've been fighting this over and over. It seems like they could do no good. Everytime there's some sort of controversy They have an immediate response. And it seems like they just drop the ball over and over again. And I'm not saying this is something that should have a defined playbook, but why is it only now that you decided to do more widespread verification? Okay. So first of all they had to come up with the idea. A lot of these different social media platforms they have like the check mark. It's not just Twitter. It's Facebook, it's Instagram. And they're all basically for celebrities, for your Kim Kardashians and your Donald Trumps and everything to verify that. A lot of it is also like a cat and mouse game where, once you pivot to something else, once you switch this policy or whatever Folks that are gonna troll, they're gonna figure out ways to troll things or they're gonna create new accounts. I mean, at this point, you still don't need to give your driver's license to twitter to open up an account and I don't think you should, but that would be a way of verifying your identity. But look, it makes sense What's the point of it being a vanity play? If you can make verification a little bit broader and make it so that people actually know who they're talking to a little bit more. Then let's stop it with the whole thing, like I'm just burnishing my reputation with this little check mark. We're getting to a point where Twitter has become the sort of, it's like the stenographer of life. Right? And we're sort of documenting every last thing, why not gets to the point where everyone is sort of identified as who they say they are? Yeah. On Twitter, if anything because it is become the world sort of like a press release machine. And why not be verified on something like that? Yeah. It was for a time, it seems that thought Twitter might just basically die And gets crushed by its own way. Yeah. And it wasn't gonna solve those problems. I think Donald Trump has obviousy reinvigorated the platform and proven that twitter is gonna last a very long time. Because it's too important as this market place of ideas. As this place where everybody goes or a lot of people go. Yeah. Just to express themselves and to express what's going on in this very breaking news fashion. So, the more that Twitter can do something whether it's these verification check marks or something else to try to keep things going and make it less crappy. That could I hope benefit everybody. Right, right. Hopefully Twitter [BLEEP] itself. No comment. [LAUGH]