Blue Checkmark Time! Twitter Is Bringing Back Verification.

November 26, 2020 Topic: Technology Region: Americas Blog Brand: Techland Tags: TwitterSocial MediaVerificationTechnologyInternet

Blue Checkmark Time! Twitter Is Bringing Back Verification.

Well, in 2021, to be exact.

In the many rhetorical battles that are fought on Twitter these days, one of the bitterest is between those who are verified, with blue checkmarks, and those who are not. In fact, “blue checks,” on that platform, is often treated as an anti-elitist epithet.

The purpose of verification is to create trust among Twitter users that a well-known person using an account is actually who they say they are. So when, say, Elon Musk participates in the replies of a Twitter thread, the blue checkmark confirms that it’s really him, and not an Elon Musk impostor or impersonator.

In 2017, Twitter placed its verification program “on hold.” This meant they were no longer accepting requests from users to become verified, although the company did continue to hand out blue checkmarks to government officials, companies, brands, entertainment brands, athletes, news outlets, and individual journalists.

Among those outside those categories, Twitter says they use a formula, involving follower count, as well as whether the individual has “a profile on Google Trends with evidence of recent search activity,” or “a Wikipedia page about them with at least 3 external references to distinct, unaffiliated sources.”

In a blog post on Tuesday, Twitter announced plans to bring back the verification program in 2021 and asked for user help in rolling the new program out, even launching a user survey. 

“Three years ago, we paused our public verification program after hearing feedback that it felt arbitrary and confusing to many people,” the post said. “A year later, we deprioritized this work further to focus on protecting the integrity of the public conversation around critical moments like the 2020 US election. Since then, we haven’t been clear about who can become verified and when, why an account might be unverified, or what it means to be verified.”

The company will relaunch the verification application process early next year. It will also, per the post, roll out “new account types and labels” next year.

“We know we can’t solve verification with a new policy alone—and that this initial policy won’t cover every case for being verified—but it is a critical first step in helping us provide more transparency and fairer standards for verification on Twitter as we reprioritize this work,” the post said. “This version of the policy is a starting point, and we intend to expand the categories and criteria for verification significantly over the next year.”

Over 100 verified accounts, including those of Musk, then-presidential candidate Joseph Biden, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and the company accounts of Apple and Uber, were hacked back in the summer, as part of a wide-ranging Bitcoin scam. The hack, perpetrated by a group of teenagers, was the subject of “The Teenager Who Hacked Twitter,” a documentary that recently aired on FX and Hulu.

Also, this week, Twitter announced a change in the policy of how it deals with “likes.” 

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters