World
Some of world's most famous glaciers to disappear by 2050: UNESCO
Some of the world's most iconic glaciers are set to vanish by 2050 due to carbon emissions warming the planet, said a new study by UNESCO.
Fifty UNESCO World Heritage sites are home to glaciers, representing about 10 percent of the world's glacier areas, including some of the world's best-known glaciers. They include the highest (next to Mount Everest), the longest (in Alaska), and the last remaining glaciers in Africa.
Glaciers in a third of sites are under threat. However, UNESCO said, the rest can still be saved if global temperatures do not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times.
The UNESCO study shows that these glaciers have been retreating at an accelerated rate since 2000 due to CO2 emissions.
World Heritage glaciers lose on average some 58 billion tons of ice every year – equivalent to the total annual volume of water used in France and Spain together – and are responsible for nearly five percent of observed global sea-level rise.
The glaciers under threat are in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America and Oceania.
"Only a rapid reduction in our CO2 emissions levels can save glaciers and the exceptional biodiversity that depends on them. COP27 will have a crucial role to help find solutions to this issue," UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said.
Also, UNESCO is advocating for the creation of a new international fund for glacier monitoring and preservation – such a fund would support comprehensive research, promote exchange networks between all stakeholders and implement early warning and disaster risk reduction measures.
Read more: Melting ice imperils 98% of Emperor penguin colonies by 2100
Half of humanity depends directly or indirectly on glaciers as their water source for domestic use, agriculture, and power. Glaciers are also pillars of biodiversity, feeding many ecosystems.
"When glaciers melt rapidly, millions of people face water scarcity and the increased risk of natural disasters such as flooding, and millions more may be displaced by the resulting rise in sea levels," said International Union for Conservation of Nature Director General Bruno Oberle.
13 killed in Russian cafe fire
A fire in a cafe in the Russian city of Kostroma killed at least 13 people and injured five others on Saturday, local authorities said.
The governor of the Kostroma region, Sergei Sitnikov, said 13 people died in the fire and five more were slightly injured. Russian news agency Interfax cited local emergency officials as saying that the death toll stood at 15. The contradicting numbers couldn’t be immediately reconciled.
Read: Tragedies in Asia: Over 400 die in one month
The blaze erupted in the early hours after someone apparently used a flare gun, according to the authorities. The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that a brawl erupted in the cafe shortly before the fire, but it wasn’t immediately clear if it had anything to do with the use of a flare gun.
Giant, sustainable rainforest fish is now fashion in America
Sometimes you start something and have no idea where it will lead. So it was with Eduardo Filgueiras, a struggling guitarist whose family worked in an unusual business in Rio de Janeiro: They farmed toads. Filgueiras figured out a way to take the small toad skins and fuse them together, creating something large enough to sell.
Meanwhile miles away in the Amazon, a fisherman and a scientist were coming up with an innovation that would help save a key, giant fish that thrives in freshwater lakes alongside Amazon River tributaries.
The ingenuity of these three men is why you can now find a beautiful and unusual sustainable fish leather in upscale New York bags, Texas cowboy boots and in a striking image from Rihanna’s Vogue pregnancy photo shoot, where a red, fish-scaled jacket hangs open above her belly. Sales provide a livable income to hundreds of Amazon families who also keep the forest standing and healthy while it protects their livelihood.
MANAGING A GIANT
The leather is a byproduct of pirarucu meat, a staple food in the Amazon that is gaining new markets in Brazil’s largest cities.
Indigenous communities working together with non-Indigenous riverine settlers manage the pirarucu in preserved areas of the Amazon. Most of it is exported, and the U.S. is the primary market.
Pirarucu can grow to 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) in length. Overfishing endangered them. But things began to change when a settler fisherman, Jorge de Souza Carvalho, known as Tapioca, and academic researcher Leandro Castello teamed up in the Mamiraua region and came up with a creative way to count the fish in lakes, the giant fish’s favorite habitat.
They took advantage of something special about this species: It surfaces to breathe at least every 20 minutes. A trained eye can count how many flash their red tails in a given area, arriving at a pretty precise estimate.
Read: Brazil's Amazon deforestation surges to worst in 15 years
The government recognizes this counting method and authorizes managed fishing. By law, only 30% of the pirarucu in a particular area may be fished the following year. The result is a population in recovery in these areas, allowing for larger catches.
In the riverine communities, people eat the fish, skin and all. But in the big slaughterhouses, where the bulk of the pirarucu catch is processed, the skin was being discarded. Then tannery Nova Kaeru showed up on the scene.
SHOESTRING BEGINNINGS
Thousands of miles away from the Amazon, down a hilly dirt road on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Nova Kaeru will process about 50,000 skins from legally-caught giant pirarucu or arapaima fish this year.
This middle-size company had an unlikely start. In 1997, Filgueiras, the guitarist, got involved in his family toad business, where the amphibians were raised for meat. He was struck by the beauty of their skin, but it was all being thrown out. He decided to try to use it, took a leather working course, and started experimenting.
“I had no financial resources. I bought a used concrete mixer and covered it with fiberglass, adapted a washing machine and started to develop the frog leather,” Filgueiras told The Associated Press in his office.
He managed to transform the skin into leather, but there was a problem: It was too small. No prospective customer wanted it. Filgueiras tried to stitch it together, but the result was too ugly. So he invented a way to weld several pieces together.
His creation started to gain attention at international fairs. A few years later, with a partner, he founded Nova Kaeru tannery, specializing in exotic leather, expanding to salmon and ostrich with techniques that don’t produce toxic waste.
Then one day a businessman knocked on the door with a stack of pirarucu skins and asked him to take a look.
Experimenting with the new skins, Filgueiras found he was able to fix the many holes in the pirarucu leather using the same technique he had created for the toad leather.
The first results impressed him. But in the meantime, the businessman died in an aircraft accident. With no previous experience in the Amazon — so different from its home base in Rio — the company nevertheless decided to procure pirarucu skin on its own in the vast region.
Read: Brazil: Can Lula the Lefty do better?
They got in touch with the people managing the fishery in Amazonas state. That network has now grown to 280 riverine and Indigenous communities, most of them in protected rainforest areas, employing some 4,000 fisher people, according to Coletivo do Pirarucu, an umbrella organization. Nova Kaeru tannery bought the skins — the first buyer the communities had — and today their most important one.
“The commercialization of the skin has been fundamental for the riverine communities,” Adevaldo Dias, a riverine leader from the Medio Jurua region, told the AP in a phone interview. “It helps make the whole business viable.”
The Association of Rural Producers of Carauari, from the Medio Jurua, sells each skin for $37, an important sum in a country where the minimum wage is around $237 per month. The money helps pay the fisherfolk, who receive $1.60 per kilo (2.2 pounds). Dias says the ideal price should be $1.9 per kilo of fish to cover all costs related to managing the fishing. They expect to earn that in the near future by exporting pirarucu meat.
From Medio Jurua and other regions, the pirarucu leather must travel several thousand miles by boat to Belem, where it is loaded onto trucks for another long journey to Nova Kaeru headquarters, a multiday trip. From there, it goes by plane to foreign buyers.
The pirarucu leather first made inroads in Texas, where it is used in cowboy boots. But the fashion industry is increasingly taking notice. In New York City, the luxury brand Piper & Skye has used pirarucu leather for shoulder bags, waist packs and purses that can fetch up to $850.
“As far as the pirarucu being a food source and feeding local communities and putting food on the table for the folks in the areas where it’s fished and beyond, it is not just a durable and beautiful material. It does promote circularity of the species in utilizing a material that would otherwise go to waste,” Joanna MacDonald, brand founder and creative director, told the AP in a video call.
Pelosi makes first public remarks since husband’s assault
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in her first public appearance since the brutal attack on her husband, rallied grassroots activists Friday, saying the midterm elections for control of Congress are a fight for democracy and “very winnable.”
“People say to me, ‘What can I do to make you feel better?’ I say: ‘Vote!’” Pelosi told those on the call.
“I believe that this race is very winnable,” Pelosi said.
Her voice cracked at times as she said of her husband’s recovery, “It’s going to be a long haul.”
Pelosi thanked those on a video call for the outpouring of support for Paul Pelosi, 82, who suffered a fractured skull and other injuries after an intruder broke into their San Francisco home late last week and bludgeoned him with a hammer in what authorities say was an intentional and political attack.
The Democratic leader spoke in the early morning from California, where her husband was released from the hospital late Thursday, her voice breaking throughout the lengthy but upbeat address.
Read: US House Speaker Pelosi arrives in Taiwan, defying Beijing
“What we are doing is not only to win an election, but this is to strengthen our democracy,” Pelosi said. “There is no question that our democracy is on the ballot.”
The speaker’s comments come as Democrats are facing a stiff fight for control of Congress in the midterm elections Tuesday, as energized Republicans are working to flip the House and Senate and end Democratic hold on Washington.
David DePape, 42, is being held without bail on state charges of attempted murder, burglary and elder abuse. DePape’s public defender, Adam Lipson, entered a not guilty plea on his behalf earlier this week and has pledged to vigorously defend him. Lipson declined to comment Friday.
At a hearing Friday, a San Francisco judge disclosed that she had worked with Speaker Pelosi’s daughter in the 1990s, giving prosecutors and the public defender’s office the opportunity to object to her role in the case.
Judge Loretta “Lori” Giorgi said she and Christine Pelosi had worked together in the San Francisco city attorney’s office in the 1990s but had not interacted in years. Christine is one of the Pelosis’ five adult children and while she has never held elected office, she’s considered to be a potential successor when Pelosi retires from her House seat.
In court filings released earlier this week, officials said DePape broke into the home, carrying zip ties, tape and a rope in a backpack. He woke up Paul Pelosi and demanded to talk to “Nancy,” who was out of town. Two officers who raced to the home after Paul Pelosi’s 911 call witnessed DePape hit him in the head with the hammer.
No one objected during Friday’s hearing to Giorgi’s ties to the Pelosi family but either side could in the future and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the case might be heard by another judge regardless. The public defender’s office did not immediately have a comment.
“I do want to make a disclosure on the record that the daughter of Mr. Pelosi, Christine Pelosi, and I were in the city attorney’s office together in the 90s,” Giorgi told the court. “And I have disclosed to counsel the interactions that I had when she and I were together. I haven’t seen or heard or talked to Ms. Pelosi after she left the office. I do see her here today.”
Giorgi worked in the city attorney’s office from 1985 to 2006, when she was appointed to the bench. She rose to the rank of deputy city attorney and was the office’s public integrity chief.
Read: Nancy Pelosi hands out impeachment pens, a signing tradition
Christine Pelosi attended Friday’s hearing but seemed to leave through a back door in order to avoid media waiting in the hallway. She entered the courtroom right before the proceeding started and sat in the front row away from reporters.
Christine Pelosi is active in California and national Democratic politics. In 2019, she released a book about her mother titled “The Nancy Pelosi Way.” In 2017, as chair of the California Democratic Party’s women’s caucus, she was actively involved in the #MeToo movement as it took shape in the state capital.
The city attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for details of Giorgi and Christine Pelosi’s employment.
DePape, who is Canadian, overstayed his authorized entry to the U.S. more than two decades ago. He should have been blocked from getting back into the country when he returned a few times over the years, according to a U.S. official who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Amidst recession fears, Biden has to convince Americans job gains mean better days ahead
President Joe Biden has notched an envious record on jobs, with 10.3 million gained during his tenure. But voters in Tuesday’s midterm elections are far more focused on inflation hovering near 40-year highs.
That’s left the president trying to convince the public that the job gains mean better days are ahead, even as fears of a recession build.
Presidents have long trusted that voters would reward them for strong economic growth, but inflation has thrown a monkey wrench into the already difficult probability of Democrats’ retaining control of the House and Senate.
Economic anxieties have compounded as the Federal Reserve has repeatedly hiked its benchmark interest rates to lower inflation and possibly raise unemployment. Mortgage costs have shot upwards, while the S&P 500 stock index has dropped more than 20% so far this year as the world braces for a possible downturn.
Biden is asking voters to look beyond the current financial pain, saying that what matters are the job gains that he believes his policies are fostering. The government reported Friday that employers added 261,000 jobs in October as the unemployment rate bumped up to 3.7%.
Roughly 740,000 manufacturing jobs have been added since the start of Biden’s presidency, a figure that the president says will keep rising because of his funding for infrastructure projects, the production of computer chips and the switch to clean energy sources.
“America is reasserting itself — it’s as simple as that,” Biden said in a Friday speech. “We also know folks are still struggling with inflation. It’s our number one priority.”
Yet the president is also warning that a Republican majority in Congress could make inflation worse by seeking to undo his programs and treating payments on the federal debt as a bargaining chip instead of an obligation to honor.
Read: Bangladesh an important country: US President
His challenge is that the party in power generally faces skeptical voters in U.S. midterms and inflation looms over the public mindset more than job growth.
“If you have a job, it’s small comfort to know that the job market is strong if at the same time you feel like every paycheck is worth less and less anyway,” said pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. “Inflation is such political poison because voters are reminded every day whenever they spend money that it is a problem we are experiencing.”
As Biden tries to fend off fears that inflation is causing the country to slide into a recession, his chief evidence of the economy’s resilience is the continued job growth.
“As we see the economy as a whole, we do not see it going into a recession,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in anticipation of the latest jobs report.
Going into the election, Biden and Democrats are already at a disadvantage. Voters generally favor the party out of the White House in midterms, giving Republicans an automatic leg up. When Yale University economist Ray Fair looked at past elections, his model forecast that Democrats would get just 46.4% of the national vote largely because Biden was in the Oval Office.
Fair’s analysis suggests that inflation basically erased the political boost that Democrats could have gotten from strong economic growth during three quarters in 2021. Even if the economy is top of mind for many voters, the conflicting forces of past growth and high inflation cancel out each other.
This makes the Democrats’ vote share roughly the same as suggested by the historical trend, Fair concluded.
Read: Record inflation puts the squeeze on Eurozone economies
But inflation compounds the obstacles for a president who has tried to convey optimism as he tours the country in the run-up to the elections. Research in social psychology and behavioral economics generally shows that people often focus on the negatives and can block out the positives.
“People pay more attention to bad news than to good news and are more likely to retain and recall bad news,” said Matthew Incantalupo, a political scientist at Yeshiva University.
Incantalupo’s research looks at how voters absorb economic news. When unemployment is low, as it is now, he said, voters generally think about jobs as a personal issue — rather than a systemic one involving government policies. But most think about inflation as a social problem beyond any person’s control, unless that individual happens to run the Fed.
“When it is high, everyone experiences it at least a little bit, and there really is no individual way to avoid it,” Incantalupo said. “Voters are going to look to government for remedies under those circumstances, and in many cases that will result in them punishing incumbents, even in the presence of other positive news about the economy.”
Republican candidates have specifically said Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package last year overheated the economy, causing prices to rise alongside the job gains that they claim would have happened anyway as the pandemic receded. They have also said that Biden should have loosened restrictions on oil production, in order to increase domestic output and lower gasoline prices.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy — who could become speaker if the GOP wins a House majority — has hammered Biden on high prices. As Biden has warned that Republicans who deny the outcome of the 2020 election are a threat to democracy, the California congressman countered that what voters care about are the costs of gas and groceries.
Read: Inflation: UN expert for increasing benefits, wages or lives will be lost
“President Biden is trying to divide and deflect at a time when America needs to unite — because he can’t talk about his policies that have driven up the cost of living,” McCarthy tweeted this past week. “The American people aren’t buying it.”
Still, inflation is not solely a domestic issue. After Russia invaded Ukraine, energy and food costs rose and suddenly flipped the global dynamics as inflation rose faster in parts of the world with less aggressive coronavirus relief than the U.S. Annual inflation in the euro zone is a record 10.7%, much higher than the 8.2% in the U.S.
Meanwhile, growth has slowed in China, the pace of world trade is slipping and Saudi Arabia-led OPEC+ has cut oil production in order to prop up prices. And because the Fed is raising rates to lower domestic inflation, the dollar has increased in value and essentially exported higher prices to the rest of the world.
This has left U.S. voters in the curious position of not necessarily blaming the president for inflation, even as they disapprove of his economic leadership.
An October poll by AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs captured this split. More than half of voters say that prices are higher because of factors beyond Biden’s control. But just 36% approve of his economic leadership.
‘Because I fell, one of the shooters thought I’d died, and left’: Imran Khan
Imran Khan, former prime minister of Pakistan, has spoken in public for the first time since being shot while participating in a protest march in the eastern city of Wazirabad.
Khan said that if the two gunmen he observed had “synchronized” their attack, he wouldn’t have survived. He was seated in a wheelchair in a Lahore hospital.
Read: Imran Khan accuses Pak army of recreating 1971-like situation
BBC News quotes the PTI chief as saying: “Because I fell, one of the shooters thought I had died, and left.”
Khan was barred from running for public office by Pakistan’s election board last month in a case that the former all-star cricketer said was “politically motivated”.
One of the men suspected of shooting him confessed on camera and told police that he “intended to murder him” because the former cricketer was “misleading” the public. Uncertainty surrounds the circumstances of the confession.
Read More: Pakistan's ex-PM Imran Khan stable after shooting at anti-govt rally
Imran Khan accuses Pak army of recreating 1971-like situation
Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan Friday said what happened in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) is happening in his country now.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) chief drew comparisons to 1970, when the largest party, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman-led Awami League, was denied the right to form the government despite gaining the majority of seats in the general elections of December 7 – a watershed moment that later broke Pakistan.
"What happened in East Pakistan? The military took action against the party which won the elections," Imran said in his first public remarks in a video broadcast on PTI's YouTube channel after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt during a long march in Punjab's Wazirabad Thursday.
"The largest party won, but it was denied its rights; the same thing is happening here right now," the PTI chief added.
Sitting in a wheelchair at a hospital in Lahore, the 70-year-old former international cricket star said he would not have survived the shooting if the two shooters he saw had "synchronised" their attack.
One of Imran's supporters was killed and 13 others, including two lawmakers, were wounded in the attack.
Read more: Rallies demonstrate Imran Khan’s political force
Imran's protest march and rallies were peaceful until Thursday afternoon's attack, raising concerns about growing political instability in Pakistan, a country with a history of political violence and assassinations.
He maintains that his April ouster from Parliament was unlawful and a conspiracy by his political opponents orchestrated by the US, a charge denied by both Washington and his successor Shehbaz Sharif.
Imran wants the government to announce snap elections. He led the protest from Lahore beginning last Friday along with thousands of supporters, saying his protest will continue until his demands are accepted.
Pakistan says elections will take place as scheduled in 2023.
Read more: Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif condemns attack on Imran Khan
Updated Covid boosters rev up protection: Pfizer study
Pfizer’s updated COVID-19 booster significantly revved up adults’ virus-fighting antibodies, the company said Friday, releasing early findings from a rigorous study of the new shots.
Booster doses tweaked to target the most common omicron strain rolled out in early September, and the Food and Drug Administration said the latest data should spur more Americans to get one — especially before another expected wave of cases as people travel for Thanksgiving.
Pfizer said people 55 and older who got the omicron-targeting booster had four-fold higher antibody levels than those given an extra dose of the original vaccine.
With many Americans reluctant to roll up their sleeves again, perhaps the better question is how the new booster compares to going without another dose.
A hint: A month after receiving the new booster, antibody levels in people 55 and older had jumped 13 times higher than before the extra dose. Younger adults saw a 9.5-fold jump, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said. It had been about 11 months since the study participants’ last vaccination.
It’s too soon to know how much real-world protection the antibody boost translates into -- and how long it will last. The results are preliminary, the study is still underway and infection-fighting antibodies naturally wane over time.
Read: UN chief warns planet is heading toward `climate chaos'
Still, the FDA had cleared the updated boosters without first requiring testing in people, basing the decision on studies of a similarly tweaked vaccine — against an earlier omicron strain — rather than the exact recipe.
So the new data “reassures us that this was a good decision to move to this bivalent vaccine,” FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press. “Right now is the time for people to consider going out and get the updated” booster.
Health experts say it’s shaping up to be a rough winter. Flu season is starting unusually early and harsh, children’s hospitals are packed with another respiratory illness named RSV, and COVID-19 cases again are expected to rise with holiday gatherings.
The original COVID-19 vaccines still offer strong protection against severe illness and death, especially among younger and healthier people who’ve gotten at least one booster — a reason for anyone who hasn’t gotten their first set of shots to do so. But effectiveness drops as new mutants emerge and more time passes since someone’s last shot.
Read: Record inflation puts the squeeze on Eurozone economies
The updated doses are combination shots, tailored to offer a boost of protection against both the original coronavirus strain and the dominant BA.5 strain. Pfizer’s shot is available for anyone 5 or older. Moderna’s version of the updated booster is for those 6 and older.
About 26.3 million Americans have gotten an updated booster since they rolled out in early September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some small studies have recently raised questions about how much advantage the updated boosters will offer rather than just getting another dose of the original vaccine.
Pfizer’s early findings compared several dozen younger and older adults given the bivalent booster with a group who received a fourth dose of the company’s original vaccine.
Is it too late to prevent climate change?
Global average temperatures have risen and weather extremes have already seen an uptick, so the short answer to whether it’s too late to stop climate change is: yes. But there’s still time to prevent cascading effects, as every degree of additional warming has exponentially disastrous impacts, experts say.
A 2021 report by the top body of climate scientists provided new analysis of the chance the world has to cap warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) or 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times in the coming decades, in line with global climate goals.
Although scientists estimated it’s still possible to stay within these limits, they said it would require immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It’s more likely that global temperature will reach or exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, the report said.
Without major action to reduce emissions, the global average temperature is on track to rise by 2.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, scientists say.
And researchers warn that the situation will get very serious before then: Once the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is reached, there will be increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons. When the 2 degrees Celsius mark is crossed, critical tolerance levels for agriculture and health will be reached.
Read more: UN, ADB to support Bangladesh's fight against climate change
But all hope is not lost, they urge.
At the time of the report’s release, Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London, said achieving the 1.5-degree goal “is still possible from a physical science point of view.”
“If we reduce emissions globally to net zero by 2040 there is still a two thirds chance to reach 1.5 degrees and if we globally achieve net zero emissions by the middle of the century, there is still a one third chance to achieve that,” she said.
If all human emissions of heat-trapping gases were to stop today, Earth’s temperature would continue to rise for a few decades but would eventually stabilize, climate scientists say. If humans don’t emit any additional planet-warming gasses, then natural processes would begin to slowly remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and global temperatures would gradually begin to decline.
Read more: Bangladesh a key player in fight against climate change, says British envoy
“There is a direct relation between delay and warming, and between warming and risk of what we would call extreme impacts,” said Ajay Gambhir, a senior research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, based at Imperial College London. “ Unfortunately, we’re already seeing all these extreme impacts — whether it’s extreme heat waves, increased risk of crop failures, forest fires or bleaching coral reefs— already happening.”
Blue check mark on Twitter: Vital verification or status symbol?
The story of Twitter’s blue checkmarks — a simple verification system that’s come to be viewed as an elite status symbol — began with some high-profile impersonations, just as the site began taking off in 2008 and ’09.
Celebrities who saw their likeness spoofed included Kanye West, now Ye, the basketball star Shaquille O’Neil and the actor Ewan McGregor, who was also impersonated on a wildly popular website called ... MySpace.
Then, in June 2009, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter, claiming that a fake account, using his name to make light of drunken driving and two Cardinals pitchers who died, damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress.
LaRussa eventually dropped his lawsuit. But in June of that year, Twitter’s then-CEO Biz Stone introduced a verification system to sort out authentic accounts from impostors. The benefit would be to the holders of the accounts, but also to everyone else on Twitter. They could be sure, if they saw the blue check next to a name, that what they were reading was authentic.
Fast-forward to 2022. Twitter’s new owner and ruler, billionaire Elon Musk, wants to turn this verification system into a revenue source for the company he paid $44 billion to purchase. It’s a 180-degree turn from the stance he took earlier this year, before his buyout closed, when he said he wanted to “verify all humans” on Twitter.
After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
“We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied.
Whatever the price, the idea of a paid verification system is raising some complex questions and concerns — beyond the customary cheers and jeers that have accompanied Musk’s every move since he took ownership of the social media company last week.
“Tapping into Twitter users to make more money may be the right strategy, but verification isn’t the right feature to charge for,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. “Verification is intended to ensure the integrity of accounts and conversations on the platform, rather than a premium feature meant to elevate the experience. There is a growing appetite among some social users to pay for features that add value to their experiences.”
Read more: Musk tweets conspiracy theory about attack on Pelosi's husband, then deletes it
Instead of charging for authentication, though, Enberg said Musk should be looking at adding features to Twitter that get people to use it more and help them grow their follower base and find a way to make money from those.
“Turning users into customers isn’t an easy sell, and the value exchange has to be right in order for it to pay off,” she said.
Twitter already has a subscription plan, Twitter Blue, that for $5 a month lets users access extra features, such as the ability to undo a tweet and read ad-free articles. Musk’s plan, as it appears from his tweets, seems to be expanding it to charge more money for more features — including the verification badge — and spread it to more users.
“Of roughly 300,000 verified accounts on Twitter we would estimate only about 25% would go down this path ultimately and pay the $8 per month fee,” Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said.
That would mean only $7.2 million a year in extra revenue for Twitter — not enough to move the dial for a company whose last reported quarterly revenue was $1.18 billion.
Ives expects Musk to first go after users who already have the check to charge them to keep it, then likely introduce other tiered pricing plans for other accounts.
“The problem is with many athletes and celebrities willing to lose their coveted blue check and refusing to pay the monthly fee it would be an ominous black eye moment for Musk on his first strategic move with Twitter,” he said.
While Musk’s exact plans are not clear, experts are raising concerns about the consequences of having a paid verification system that leaves anyone unwilling to pay vulnerable to impersonation — and anyone who does pay the ability to have their Twitter presence boosted by the platform’s algorithms.
Read more: Indian-origin tech executive ‘helping out’ Musk in revamping Twitter
While many verified users on Twitter are famous, there are also community activists, journalists at small newspapers and outlets inside and outside of the U.S. — and regular people who simply find themselves in the news. For this subset, $8 a month may not be worth it, no matter how many memes Musk posts about the cost of a cup of coffee.
The idea behind verification — which other social networks later copied — was to ensure that public figures, politicians and businesses were who they say they are. It began small at first, as things do when tech companies test out new features and functions.
“The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation,” Stone wrote in 2009. He suggested that those who can’t be immediately verified put their official website in their Twitter bio to show that they are who they say they are.