Taliban’s love affair with Twitter Blue

Verified Taliban Twitter handles are not only receiving people's attention but also creating a discourse whether a regressive regime officials should have such privilege.

New Delhi, Jan 17: Only a select few Twitter users with reputation used to get the much coveted Blue Tick earlier but ever since the microblogging app's new owner Elon Musk has made it easy to buy it for a small price, even Taliban fighters are having it now a days. Not that the radical Islamists were not on the widely popular social media platform before, but now that it's available for just $8 per month without any such restrictions, they don't have to hide their real identity and use proxies any more to get the tag.

The Taliban leadership's love for Twitter is not new as earlier too they have been using the platform extensively. In fact, when Donald Trump was banned by Twitter during the last presidential election in the US, it was accused of offering a platform to terrorists but banning the sitting POTUS. Now, Twitter has gone to the next level where Talibans get blue ticks.

Verified Taliban Twitter handles are not just receiving people's attention but also creating a discourse on whether a regressive regime official should have such privilege. When the terrorism is abhorred all around, the perpetrators who killed thousands of US soldiers are now being offered blue ticks beyond anyone's belief. This is being criticised by the social media users who are asking Musk to stop it forthwith.

Why Taliban is looking for blue ticks

Obviously there is a reason and that could be their search for legitimacy. Social media is a huge leveller where Taliban also feels they could voice their opinion, however bad or regressive it may be. They know the Western media would just show one outlook and ignore the viewpoint from the Taliban. With Twitter, the Taliban leadership would certainly be able to do its public relation job pretty well.

Above all, with the Blue Tick Twitter handle, the Taliban representatives are taken seriously. The users know which are the associated handles that could be relied upon for any information from the Taliban government. Interestingly, a research paper titled, "Powered by Twitter? The Taliban's Takeover of Afghanistan", is doing the rounds.

The study observed 63 accounts on Twitter that are being used by the Taliban leadership that includes their spokespersons. Some of these Twitter handles have gained huge popularity on the social media platform. Twitter activity of Taliban-aligned accounts have also gone up significantly and according to this data, these accounts had more than two million followers on Twitter in September 2021.

The study also shows that till 8th May 2022, the content from Taliban handles reached quite widely as more than 3.3 million accounts followed them. Not just the number of followers but the Twitter engagement also went up as more than 1,26,000 Twitter accounts either retweeted or shared the content that was shared by the Taliban-aligned Twitter handles.