Greg Beato on Twitter and Free Speech
Credit: Stian Eikeland / Foter.com / CC BY NC-SATwitter has developed into a major
hub for mainstream discourse in large part because millions of
people tweet under their real names, including thousands of
celebrities and other prominent people whose accounts have been
explicitly verified by Twitter. This high degree of disclosure
leads to a high degree of trust. Twitter offers substantial
opportunities to interact with immediately identifiable people, and
that makes it a good place for strengthening real-world social ties
and business relationships, and also for keeping track of Donald
Trump’s latest feuds and what Kim Kardashian thinks of Atlantic
City.
But as Greg Beato observes, as much as Twitter benefits from users who tweet under their real names—especially from verified celebrities—it hasn’t seen any need to prohibit fake personas. Its combination of authenticated identity and easy pseudonymity, with no barriers to access between these two very distinct classes of users, is a pretty unique attribute. In fact, Beato writes, so far at least, Twitter’s laissez-faire attitude toward online discourse has been its greatest business proposition.