Mr. Ronan Costello:

There are two things I would say in response to the Deputy's question. First, in respect of verification on Twitter, it has been around for several years now. It is there to authenticate and confirm that a person is who they say they are. Hopefully, over the next couple of months, users will see us roll out developments in that area. For example, the public verification process will be reopened so that increasing numbers of individuals can apply for verification and can verify that they are who they say they are, and also that a real individual is behind the account. That will go some way towards addressing the issue.

We are also nuancing what verification means by potentially rolling out different kinds of labels to enable a user to verify that they are acting as an organisation or a company, an individual, a Government representative, a State-backed media entity, etc. This endeavour to nuance verification labels and to confirm identities is something that we are definitely undertaking at the moment. Hopefully, users will see some progress on that which will mitigate some of the abuse that people perceive is coming from anonymous accounts.