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Journalism of Courage
Over the past few years, Twitter and Facebook have become platforms for head of states, political leaders and business heads to reach out to the people and put across their point of view. The platforms have also attracted all sorts of criminals, rogues, and mischief makers, often under assumed names or even anonymous. While Twitter does verify important people in the form of a blue tick over their profiles, it has not been effective in weeding out impostors.
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Of late, a lot of handles that try to pass themselves off as someone else have assaulted the micro-blogging platform. To make matters worse, there are many who thrive on the misinformation spread by them. While it is an unstated rule in newsrooms that posts from only verified handles should be taken seriously, since Twitter has no policy to verify all important handles, even the media does take some handles seriously, at times. Twitter verifies handles on its own when it thinks a certain person is important enough and this has nothing to do with the number of followers or tweets. But given the large numbers it might take a long time for Twitter to figure out if someone important has signed up.
That is what seems to have happened with the @HafeezSaeedJUD handle. No one bothered to check that there are over half a dozen handles that could be the JUD chief’s which make all manner of statements that are offensive and could be detrimental to the interests of India. You cannot expect Twitter to verify handles like that of Hafiz Saeed, given that they promote terror or other violent/radical ideologies. However, soon after his alleged tweet on JNU, it did remove the handle, based on their policy of taking down accounts that support terror. This is usually done after someone reports the handle.
Given that posts on Twitter are taken far too seriously or far more seriously than they deserve to be, it might be a good idea for the platform to offer a disclaimer for what could be fake accounts. Google has this feature which alerts users to spam mail. It will need sound technology of course but it will go a long way towards helping Twitter clean up its timeline.
Also read | JNU row: Behind Rajnath Singh’s claim, a fake ‘Hafeez’ Saeed tweet
Such a feature might also prevent people — the average hyperactive Twitter user and the tech-challenged politician — from reacting immoderately and taking all 140 character posts seriously. There seems to be a sense among some Twitter users that since people like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama put out serious stuff on Twitter, everything on the platform warrants the same credibility. Nothing could be further from the truth.
