eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has taken a swipe at Elon Musk’s (pictured) plans for Twitter, calling the proposed changes a “dog’s breakfast.”
Inman Grant, who is the government official responsible for policing bullying and abuse online, said that the new plan to charge users for a blue tick would create new risks online. She also said she was not sure whether government accounts would be exempt from the policy change.
“It’ll be a total dog’s breakfast if anyone can impersonate any individual, any agency, particularly when we expect it to be an official agency or voice of government,” she said.
“I had read and will seek verification that government agencies will be exempted from having to pay for the subscription, but that has not yet been clarified.”
Inman Grant was formerly Twitter Australia’s head of policy between 2014-16 and said that Musk’s short time in charge pointed to a bumpy time ahead.
“If the first week of the chief twit’s tenure is any indication, I think they have a bumpy ride ahead of them,” Inman Grant said at Senate Estimates on Tuesday, referring to Musk.
“It’s said that content moderation is not rocket science, but in some ways, it’s much more complex and nuanced than that.”
Following questions from Senator Hanson-Young, Inman Grant said the verification system was created to prevent impersonation and protect high-profile people from abuse.
“If you make it a pay-for-play type of proposition, it turns that whole justification for having such a system on its head,” she said. “It’s simply paying for a subscription service that not only will not provide those protections, but can open the platform up to much more malfeasance, impersonation, and fake accounts and possibly with state-sponsored information operations.”
Twitter began rolling out its new Blue verification system, which forces users to pay $8 per month for the once-coveted blue tick, on Sunday. However, the company decided to hold fire entirely with the US midterm elections happening yesterday.
Musk has also started banning users permanently if they appeared to impersonate people online and were not clearly marked as parody accounts. However, the 51-year old South African father of eight seems to have mainly taken aim at people poking fun at him.
NEW: Elon Musk just banned a 2.3M-follower account for making fun of Musk’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, despite the account being clearly marked as “parody”. pic.twitter.com/8ova4YFSUG
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) November 7, 2022
