Before, earning a verification on social media, you had to be a celebrity, a politician or someone in the public eye such as a journalist, however, since Elon Musk’s introduced verification for sale on X,  it’s now easier than ever to buy credibility that was once hard earned. This creates an issue where users can share divisive content online with unearned credibility to unsuspecting readers.  

As the general election approaches where parties and users alike share content in the attempt to win votes and spread ideologies, new research “Echo Chamber Formation Sharpened by Priority Users” from Munster Technological University suggests that X’s verification model can intensify the polarisation on people's opinions and create echo chambers online. 

One of the Co-Author’s of the research is Kleber Andrade and I spoke to him. Kleber talks about his background, verification on social media, the research he Co-Authored, the recent American election, the upcoming Irish election, AI ,and more.

More about Kleber Andrade:

Kleber recently started as an Assistant Lecturer at Munster Technological University, Ireland. Previously, he was a researcher at the CENTAI Institute in Turin, Italy.

He completed a PhD in Applied Mathematics supervised by Prof. James Gleeson, at the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry (MACSI) of the University of Limerick, Ireland.

His research interests are in the space of online social networks, information diffusion and nonlinear dynamics.