When Dominic Raab quit as UK deputy prime minister on Friday he was a very angry man, indeed — ironic, considering he was being forced out over bullying allegations.
The nearly 24 hours between the report that damned him and his decision to go must surely have been intense for Mr Raab. Too intense for him to have noticed one of the greatest global meltdowns shared by notable people across time zones.
I refer, of course, to Twitter’s decision to kill the authenticating blue tick that has sat for years on “notable” individuals’ handles as a mark of their accomplishments. In hindsight, Mr Raab may get to reflect on the good timing of his decision to quit. At the time of writing, Mr Raab’s tick was still there, albeit shaded grey as an affiliate of government or multilateral organisation.
Many others, including yours truly, have had their handles stripped of the little button that accompanied so many tweets. Like others, I acknowledged it immediately.
In my case, that tweet broke a months-long Twitter ban that was self-imposed. From the moment of Twitter’s takeover by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, I have sat out the volatile changes the platform has undergone since. I think the demise of the blue tick is enough to end the purdah. The events of the last months have reset Twitter in the minds of users and the wider world. I am happy to return to the new caveated space that everyone now recognises as changed and not for the better.
So many others took the development deeply personally, it is unfair to single them out. There was a raft of people in mourning for the legacy Twitter that had taken up so much of their time. Alexander Stubb, the former Finnish prime minister, posted a series of tweets on the meme “I’m still here”.
“I am not longer verified, but I hereby verify that it is still me,” he wrote.
Some of it felt reminiscent of those people who have woken up to find an obituary of themselves in the newspaper.
Others attempted to reassert that identity. By cropping pictures of the old mark and their name, they could somehow declare their own legitimacy and the right they felt to display something was gained by their efforts. Engaged in this way, they could project their own credentials. My own portrait was replaced by an image with the old tick.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former Estonian leader, tried to add the word “verified” to his profile. He tweeted the effort went wrong and the most he could write was “verif”. He is now proudly an “ex-verif” in his handle.
All sorts of hashtags on the theme of defiance have been devised and tweeted.
This is a false comfort. The digital meaning of Mr Musk’s decision to shift the blue tick to a subscription model will have a deep impact on the visibility of tweets. The very use of Twitter is about the intensity and impact of the tweet and the playing field has now been skewed against basic users.
There were those who tried to put distance between themselves and the development. The Beano comic pointed out that dogs have blue ticks too and that one could be shared by their character Gnasher. Some sent photos of an actual blue tick and tag lines about its blood-sucking properties. Some just outright said they lost their blue tick because they were too principled or “smart” to fall for the new rules brought in by Twitter’s owner.
The issue of identity in a digital world goes far beyond this narrow spectrum of outrage. We all have our names, backgrounds, legal status and self-image. Twitter’s decision has cut into all of those areas.
It would be perhaps better to ask how we can own our identity. Some countries are better than others at creating a digital profile for their residents and citizens. But that is not the same as a digital identity.
I’m not even talking about an avatar that resembles and can act as a proxy digital presence. Engineering a single, always available official digital marker remains beyond the frame of reference for most states.
Yet it is vital. Not least because the states are most likely to provide a secure identity that is most trusted. And if it is attached to your citizenship then it becomes a right that cannot be stripped in the way that Mr Musk has removed so many people from their own space.
Spurring a debate on how this can happen and how far it should go is clearly vital. It is not just who you are and how real is your image. What about the development of new dimensions. If the metaverse had incorporated your real world property, should you have some rights to assert over that land grab across the virtual divide?
In the months ahead it will be clear that Mr Musk has not done his dash with ringing the changes in his prized public square. Hopefully I return as one less intense about the vagaries of the commentary. More willing to use it again as the equivalent of a window over that square. I shall open that window regularly and shout out loud into the void. For the stripped back those excluded from Twitter’s algorithm boosts, it is a perspective that can keep the tweeting experience real. Just about.
