When Elon Musk recently spoke about giving Twitter users the ability to self-verify so that every user can get an “authentication mark”, he was adding to the buzz regarding verification on social media platforms
There has been a lot of talk recently about the prevalence of unverified profiles in social media, and the need for authentication of users. In fact, the Indian government has been pushing for greater accountability on the internet, especially with regard to social media. The government believes that the filtering out of anonymous accounts can help reduce the number of bot accounts and curtail hate speech.
As per the government’s intermediary guidelines notified in February 2021, Rule 4 (7) of the Information technology (intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, users who wish to verify their accounts voluntarily are expected to be provided with the appropriate mechanisms to verify their accounts and provided with a demonstrable and visible mark of verification on social media platforms. The stated intent behind the governments’ move is to differentiate anonymous accounts and bots and curtail hate speech on these platforms.
However, none of the social media platforms are currently offer their users this facility.
It must be stated that this is not because of the lack of technology to make it happen. Instant, digital verification (or self-verification) can be enabled with the use of existing verification solutions. A SaaS-based verification solution that leverages the power of Artificial Intelligence and componentized government data can be integrated into almost any platform to empower users to verify themselves instantly.
The advantages of this easy and instant verification are not limited to social media. Readers may recall that a payment platform ran afoul of the RBI due to loopholes in their KYC procedures. Any financial or other online platform can integrate verification solutions to authenticate users in real-time and with information available to the user.
Thanks to the underlying robustness and authentication policies in-built into the solution, and authenticated interfaces with government databases, there will be no need for additional checks from the platform’s side.
The government’s push has given the debate on verification a new impetus. What do you think about it?