Hillicon Valley — Twitter to charge for user verification

Under Twitter’s new leadership, the social media platform is expected to start charging users $8 per month to be verified.  

Meanwhile, a senior cyber official said government agencies are “concerned” about disinformation campaigns ahead of the midterms. 

This is Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Send tips to The Hill’s Rebecca Klar and Ines Kagubare.

Musk to charge $8 per month for blue checkmark

Elon Musk teased a plan Tuesday to charge $8 per month for Twitter’s subscription service and let users become verified with the platform’s blue checkmark as part of the deal.  

Musk called Twitter’s “current lords & Peasants system” governing who has a blue checkmark or not “bullshit” in his post about the new system he’s planning to launch. 

• “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” Musk wrote.  
  
• He said the price will be adjusted by country “proportionate to purchasing power parity.” 
  
• Musk’s post comes after some high-profile users, including author Stephen King, pushed back over a reported plan for the company to charge $20 per month for verification. The Verge first reported on that plan. 

For the $8 monthly fee, Musk said users will also get “priority in replies, mentions & search,” which he called “essential to defeat spam.” 

Read more here. 

Agencies concerned over disinformation campaigns

Jen Easterly, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said her agency is concerned about the rise of disinformation campaigns originating from Russia, China and Iran ahead of the November midterms.  

Easterly, who spoke on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said government agencies are very worried about how those nation-state threat actors are attempting to influence the election. 

• “It’s a significant concern because we think about these adversaries that are trying to sow discord, that are trying to break us apart, that are trying to undermine the integrity of our elections,” Easterly said. 
  
• Easterly noted a recent report from cybersecurity firm Mandiant that found that a pro-Chinese disinformation group has been aggressively targeting the U.S. by attempting to discredit the U.S. political system and discourage Americans from voting in the midterms. 
  
• Easterly added that her agency is also facing other types of threats including cyberattacks, insider threats, physical threats and harassment against elections officials.  
  
• “It’s a more complex environment than I think we’ve ever experienced,” Easterly said, referring to the numerous election threats her agency faces. 

Read more here. 

GROUPS PRESS TWITTER ADVERTISERS OVER PLATFORM RULES

A group of more than 40 civil society organizations on Tuesday sent a letter urging the top 20 Twitter advertisers to threaten to suspend their ads globally if the platform’s new owner Elon Musk won’t commit to enforcing safety standards and community guidelines. 

“We, the undersigned organizations, call on you to notify Musk and publicly commit that you will cease all advertising on Twitter globally if he follows through on his plans to undermine brand safety and community standards, including gutting content moderation. This means that Musk must not roll back the basic moderation practices Twitter already has on the books now and must commit to actually enforcing those rules,” the civil society groups wrote in their open letter to the advertising CEOs. 

Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Google and Disney were among the 20 advertisers to receive the open letter, signed by groups including the NAACP, the Center for American Progress, GLAAD, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, and #Voteprochoice. The effort was organized by Free Press, Media Matters and Accountable Tech. 

“If Elon Musk follows through with just a fraction of what he has already committed to doing, then Twitter will not and can not be a safe platform for brands. Urgent action is needed by advertisers,” the letter continued. 

Read more here. 

FCC commissioner pushes for TikTok ban

One of the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is calling on Congress to ban TikTok over concerns that user data could end up in the hands of China’s government. 

“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in an interview with Axios published Tuesday. 

“There simply isn’t a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party],” Carr wrote. 

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is based in China. Carr, who was appointed by former President Trump, wrote a letter to Apple and Google earlier this year asking the tech giants to remove TikTok from their app stores due to concerns about data harvesting. 

Read more here. 

TWITTER CONTENT ENFORCEMENT PAUSED 

A top Twitter official confirmed that some content enforcement work on the platform has been frozen following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company, which was finalized late last week.  

Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity for Twitter, tweeted on Tuesday in response to a Bloomberg story that reported many staffers for the website had their access to content moderation tools frozen after the acquisition. 

This is exactly what we (or any company) should be doing in the midst of a corporate transition to reduce opportunities for insider risk,” Roth said. “We’re still enforcing our rules at scale.”  

Bloomberg reported that hundreds of staff members on the trust and safety team usually have access to tools to remove posts with misinformation or hate speech, but that number has dropped to 15. 

Read more here.

BITS & PIECES

An op-ed to chew on: For the love of evidence: Time to record space 

Notable links from around the web: 

Truth Social’s Influence Grows Despite Its Business Problems (The New York Times / Stuart Thompson and Matthew Goldstein) 

Who’s winning, and losing, in the Elon Twitter era (Vox / Shirin Ghaffary) 

Musk teased new Twitter verification system. Some blue checks are seeing red (NBC News / Eli Rosenberg) 

😒 Lighter click: Dad jokes

One more thing: Celebs plan to exit Twitter

A slew of Hollywood stars are considering pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform. 

The controversial Tesla CEO was named the sole director of Twitter on Monday after completing his $44 billion acquisition of the company last week. Musk has suggested he plans to lift lifelong bans and transform Twitter’s content moderation policies, leading critics to express concerns about the spread of misinformation. 

As the outspoken billionaire took the reins of the company, several celebrities said they were fleeing it. 

While her account didn’t appear to be deleted, mega-producer Shonda Rhimes tweeted on Saturday that she was saying sayonara to Twitter. 

“Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned,” Rhimes wrote. 

Read more here. 

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.