The storyline

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA), SpaceX founder, and inventor of the Boring Firm, has reached an agreement with the board of Twitter Inc. (TWTR) to buy the company and take it private.

Why does it matter?

Twitter plays a significant role in public conversation, notably in the cryptosphere. Musk’s upcoming takeover of the social media network is worth keeping an eye on, especially if you’re a Crypto Twitter user.

So far, the bird site has primarily focused on what Tesla’s CEO purchasing it implies for free speech and bots.

In the press statement announcing the sale, I noticed something more. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by… authenticating all individuals,” Musk stated in a statement.

Does this imply that Musk wants to eliminate all anonymous accounts? And, more importantly, how would this operate in practice?

It appears that “authenticate” in this context would imply gathering some sort of personally identifying information (PII).

It doesn’t seem so horrible if it’s as simple as checking a box or completing a captcha.

It’s a different story if “authentication” means checking a driver’s license, passport, or credit card to ensure that the person on the other end of the line is a real person.

The ramifications of Twitter collecting PII are concerning, especially given the company’s recent history of cybersecurity failures. A huge percentage of Twitter users, in particular, stay pseudonymous or anonymous for a variety of reasons, ranging from just wishing to troll or harass others to legitimate worries of posting under their real names.

Many people may also lack access to the kind of identification that is required. This authentication system would have to take these people into account.

Musk is well-known for his dislike of bots and their potential role on social media, so it makes sense that he would focus on this topic (and it is for sure an issue). One approach to deal with this is to use account authentication.

On the other hand, he has stated that the algorithms that power Twitter should be open source. This won’t alter anything in and of itself, because Musk hasn’t committed to making the data that Twitter’s algorithms use to make decisions public, and that’s where the true digital gold is.