Twitter Will Verify Nazis, But It Won’t Verify Me
I used to be a Twitter evangelical. A wild-eyed convert, ever since I signed up back in 2008. For many years, I’d try to persuade my rightfully-dubious friends to make accounts and join the conversation. “It’s amazing! You can interact with anyone in the world! You can hear from reporters and politicians and average people everywhere!” I’d tell them. Some of them, God help us, signed up.
I’ve been on Twitter for nine years. I have over 8000 followers. I met my partner on Twitter. I networked my way into many of the jobs I’ve held on Twitter. Twitter has throughly enveloped my life in its baby-blue tendrils. And Twitter, just as I expected, does not care: or at least, it cares much more for white supremacists with stupid hair than it ever has about committed and definitely not fascist-sympathizing users like me. This is how I know.
Last week, I decided to run an experiment. I was going to see if I could get verified on Twitter. (I should note that all of this took place just before Twitter announced it was pausing the verification program). I considered applying for the blue checkmark a while ago, when the program first rolled out: many people I knew in the media and academic world with similar modest followings to my own were successfully receiving blue checks. I decided against it. I was in the midst of a privacy lockdown post Trump election, and I didn’t care for the idea of Twitter having any more personal information on me than I was already grudgingly providing it
I changed my mind — on a purely experimental basis — last week. I’d been watching as actual Nazis, alt-right organizers, serial doxxers, and other organisms were easily verified and permitted to remain on the service. I’d watched in horror as Twitter’s community first slid and rolled and then actively free-fell into a morass of shit from GamerGate onward: a morass of shit that came to a frothy head during the 2016 elections and the white supremacist revival that accompanied it.
I’d had to start using BlockTogether to block thousands upon thousands of aggrieved gamer toddlers, dodgy Russian treason bots, Channer flying-monkeys, and garden variety under-stimulated and viciously bigoted fuckboys. I’d identified, documented, and reported dozens of Twitter accounts that were actively doxxing people, making actionable threats, and committing other blatant violations of TOS with essentially no meaningful results from Twitter’s moderating team. From my point of view, Twitter had transitioned from a weird late-night conversation at a dive bar with a bunch of semi-strangers to a twenty-four hour fascist love-in, and I was pissed off about it.
My slow-fade from Twitter wasn’t just about the aforementioned morass of fascist-tinged shit and screaming that had become its dominant culture. It was also about Twitter’s ever-more-distressing impact on my brain. I have ADHD, and I’ve always been deeply susceptible to constantly updating webpages and little flashing lights. Having a brain like mine in the apotheosis of the social media era is a lot like being a neurotic Border Collie with an endless supply of little fuzzy tennis balls to chase. Except in this already-regrettable analogy, the tennis balls I’m chasing are enraged boys named Chadwick who want to send my friends to a concentration camp.
I did not care what Chadwick thought about politics, I would not really notice if Chadwick was swallowed up in an immense sinkhole or devoured by an enormous snail or shot into the solar system, I did not care that Chadwick thought I was a stupidcuckfaggotuglywhoreSJWslutbitchcorpulentfuck, and yet. Yet. I’d keep chasing that horrible, snotty little tennis ball.
There I’d be, at 3:00 AM. Missing sleep. Endlessly refreshing Twitter — oh, that little “pop” sound the app makes! Tormenting Chadwick, just as he’d attempted to torment me. I like to think I give as good as I get on the Internet: I’ve frightened off plenty of belligerent Internet boys. But was I really winning, if I was still up at 3:00 AM and hadn’t read anything that gave me some semblance of pleasure or enjoyment or (at least)mutual recognition of human intelligence in weeks?
Zen Buddhists like to remind their students to “be here now”: to fully be present in each moment of their fleeting, eminently snuffable, animal lives. Did I really want to Be Here Now with Chadwick?
No. Fuck Chadwick. But before I really reduced my Twitter to occasional anodyne links to work-related topics, I wanted to see if they’d verify me. I wanted to give Twitter a final shot at winning me back, repairing the broken trust. Maybe I felt like I kind of deserved that stupid blue checkmark, after all those years of evangelism for their platform, of putting up with their ever-weirder professional decisions, of allowing them to manipulate me (a supposedly intelligent person!) into arguing with spotty boys from Topeka about the NRA into the wee hours of the evening.
I sent Twitter a link to my employee profile at Harvard. I sent them a link to my contributor page at Slate.com. I sent them a link to my personal website. In the extra-comments box (does anyone read that?), I politely reminded them of my nine-year tenure on the website.
I hit “send,” and I waited. A few days later, I got this in my inbox:
Denied. Nine years of near-constant Twitter use and ardent boosting apparently got me nowhere.
Being denied doesn’t bother me on a personal-ego level. I’d understand if verification really was reserved for Drake, senators, and the occasional popular novelist. But it’s obvious verification doesn’t work that way and hasn’t for a long time. If Twitter is going to survive — and it’s looking increasingly doubtful — it had best figure out a way to avoid prioritizing fascists and alt-righters over long-time users.
