The right has an explosion of verified profiles on Twitter – 5/7/2023 – Politics

New Twitter rules are amplifying voices from the radical right on the platform. With the paid stamp system, implemented two weeks ago, the concentration of verified users in this ideological spectrum jumped from 0.7% to 15.4%: a growth of more than 20 times.

These accounts either paid for the seal or obtained it through a non-transparent redistribution by Elon Musk’s company. Specifically among influencers of the political debate in Brazil, profiles with a seal in this rightmost group now represent 15.5% of the total verified —previously, they were 5.9%.

On the other hand, the left and center had greater relevance in the network and lost profiles verified in this new arrangement, in a combination between low adherence to the paid plan and removal of old badges.

The analysis was carried out by DeltaFolha using the Ideological GPS, a tool that positions the network’s main public figures and their followers in the ideological spectrum (see the methodology here).

For this analysis, the accounts were arranged on an ideological line and divided into ten groups of equal sizes, so that the middle of the ruler does not necessarily represent the political center. The profiles of 2,243 political debate influencers and 105,000 active followers randomly selected from a base of 1.8 million accounts were considered.

The news adopted by Musk directly impact the experience on the site, as the profiles with the seal officially started to have algorithmic priority, that is, they are being displayed with greater prominence.

Publications, retweets and responses published by Twitter Blue subscribers and other verified ones are already actively recommended in the timeline and in searches, even for those who do not follow these accounts. Users end up more exposed to content from pseudo-influencers and privileged profiles by the company.

The transparency of algorithms, responsible for recommending and directing publications to users, is one of the duties of the platforms provided for in the Bill of Fake News, which had the vote postponed in the Chamber of Deputies.

“Soon, subscribers with the blue verification symbol will have priority in the ranking of searches, mentions and responses, to help reduce the visibility of scams, spam and bots”, justified the company in December 2022, when announcing the paid plan .

This guideline, combined with the new ideological disposition of verified profiles, tends to alter the balance of political debate on the network.

Considering the division of users into ten equal groups, the two on the right are the only ones with an increase in validated accounts. They now concentrate 30% of profiles with the seal, against 14% at the other extreme.

Among political influencers, the distribution is more homogeneous, but with a similar movement. The two rightmost lanes now comprise 28% of verified profiles, against 15% on the opposite side.

This difference can be explained not only by the greater willingness of the right to pay for stamps, but also by the mass removal of stamps granted in the former administration. The absolute number of verified profiles dropped from 1,121 to 342 among political influencers and from 294 to 208 among users in the analyzed sample.

Before, the icons were distributed free of charge and served to authenticate figures of public relevance, with the aim of curbing false accounts and reducing misinformation.

On April 20, the company removed the old brands, after announcing that they would be exclusive to Twitter Blue payers, in addition to politicians and some organizations selected by the platform. A DeltaFolha survey showed that 73% of the most popular profiles with the old seal had not signed the plan and were impacted by the measure, in a sample of 2,832 verified accounts.

Faced with low adherence, the platform “returned” the status to part of the influencers, even against the will of some, as is the case of youtuber Felipe Neto. Followed by 16.3 million on the platform, he turned down the icon and criticized the new system.

Even with the returns, the new survey shows that only 0.2% of the analyzed users currently have the blue seal (20 out of 10,000 users), indicating a low commercial success for Twitter Blue. In Brazil, the subscription costs from BRL 42 per month, or BRL 440 for the annual plan.

Striker Neymar and former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) —with 62.1 million and 11.3 million followers, respectively— are examples of personalities who have returned to display the badge without apparently being subscribers.

The data suggests that the popularity of accounts with more than 1 million followers was the main criterion for badge refunds, but perhaps not the only one. With a few exceptions, the majority of influencers who lost their status and did not reappear the icon are below this range on the network.

The return of the stamps has drawn criticism even from some Musk supporters. When launching Twitter Blue, the billionaire had stated that the old verification system was “corrupt”, that “there should not be a different treatment for celebrities” and that the charge would create “a more democratic environment”.

In practice, the new rules implemented by Musk leverage alternative voices and push conversations on the network to the side to which the entrepreneur is ideologically aligned. In Brazil, for example, some channels previously labeled as disseminators of fake news, within the scope of inquiries by Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court, now have the verification seal and its rewards.

Sought by the report, the press office of Twitter did not clarify the questions presented and only responded with an emoji of feces.