Explained: How the Taliban have started buying blue ticks on Elon Musk’s Twitter
Tech2Jan 17, 2023
On Monday, BBC reported that at least two senior Taliban leaders and four of its supporters are using Twitter's paid-for verification feature, acquiring blue ticks next to their user names.
The senior Taliban leaders are identified as the head of the Taliban's department for access to information, Hedayatullah Hedayat, and the head of the media watchdog at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture, Abdul Haq Hammad.
Twitter's leniency toward the Taliban threatens to glorify violence and legitimize human rights abuses in Afghanistan. By allowing Taliban-affiliated accounts to use its platform, Musk potentially perpetuates extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and torture, systematic segregation of women in Afghanistan, and the war on freedom.
The Taliban may not be considered the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan by the international community, but they have a right to a social media apparatus to counter what they consider Western propaganda. Musk's Blue Tick services don't promote Taliban messages, they simply allow community members to form their own opinions.
There's a 46% chance that Afghanistan will be used as a base for anti-NATO terrorism by 2026, according to the Metaculus prediction community.