As the public combs through Elon Musk’s Twitter feed for clues on how the billionaire entrepreneur intends to run the social media platform he’s buying for $44 billion, one mysterious line stands out: “authenticate all real humans.”
That cryptic proposal is vague enough to keep people guessing about what Musk has in mind but specific enough that it offers several possible paths as he looks to shape Twitter more to his liking.
For example, Musk could seek to require real names on accounts. Or perhaps he may continue to allow pseudonyms but require photo identification, or integration with third-party services where users are already known.
Depending on the outcome, the plan could have big ramifications for Twitter’s hundreds of millions of users.
Musk’s drive to “authenticate” Twitter users stems from one of his biggest pet peeves with the platform: spam accounts, particularly those that push cryptocurrency scams. It’s often not hard to find these accounts lurking in the replies to Musk’s tweets; many even attempt to trade on his celebrity and lure the unsuspecting by impersonating him.
It didn’t help that in the summer of 2020, Musk’s verified account was affected by a widespread Twitter hack that led to users including former President Barack Obama and Kanye West unwittingly spreading a bitcoin scam. Cryptocurrency spam bots, Musk has said, represent Twitter’s “single most annoying problem.”
Musk’s diagnosis may reflect the experiences of a very particular type of user, but it so happens that this user will soon control the design of the platform. As part of his solution for battling cryptocurrency bots, Musk wants to make it easier to separate real from fake accounts under his proposal to “authenticate all real humans.”
