For the better part of three years now it’s been almost impossible for people to obtain “verified” status on Twitter. That’s the source of the little blue checkmark you see next to some users’ names. Back in 2017 there was some sort of “controversy” over supposed white supremacists being verified and general complaints from the rest of the public about not having requests processed or answered, After that, the system seemed to essentially disappear and the only people who wound up getting blue checkmarks were the seriously famous people who had newly created accounts.
According to a report from the Android Police, that may be about to change. Some pending code in Twitter’s test site revealed the addition of a “request verification” option. When they looked into it and asked the company to comment, Twitter responded by saying that the verification system was making a comeback.
Twitter has quite a troublesome history with verified accounts. For a long time, it’s been unclear when an account qualifies to get the blue checkmark, and following controversy over verified white supremacists in 2017, the company essentially halted the program, promising to revamp it in the future. It looks like that time is about to come, as app sleuth Jane Manchun Wong spotted some code on the Twitter website pointing to a “Request verification” option in Settings.
After this discovery, TechCrunch reached out to Twitter to ask the company about its plans, and it confirmed that it’s working to bring the feature back for everyone. In contrast to the past, the social network also wants to publish public guidelines on how and when accounts would be allowed to become verified. Previously, Twitter only had internal rules that supposedly stated that any account of “public interest” would be able to get the blue checkmark.
I don’t know if this is a reason to celebrate (or even get excited) or not. When I got my blue checkmark, it was in the period shortly before all of the controversies began. In fact, I was probably among the last batches of people who were able to apply through the routine channels and get an approval back in a relatively short amount of time. I don’t recall exactly, but I think it was only a couple of months.
The value of the verification system is also less obvious than it might have seemed earlier in the site’s existence. I suppose there’s still something to be gained by assuring people that the account they are responding to or retweeting is the actual person or organization they claim to be to avoid falling for trolls and satire accounts. There’s also an option to filter your timeline and columns so you only see verified accounts if you’re dealing with massive spam problems, but what fun is that unless all of your friends are also verified as well?
There are also plenty of ways they could screw this up, and given Twitter’s history, if the opportunity to do so presents itself, they rarely let it pass by. For one thing, they’ve currently got more than 330 million active users per month. They haven’t processed requests for several years. How many of those people are going to start hammering the request button as soon as it shows up? This isn’t the sort of thing you can just automate or hand over to an AI program, so somebody is going to have to investigate each and every request. It could be years before you see a response.
The bigger question is what criteria they will establish as to who “deserves” to be verified. Back when I applied, I’d been on television a few times, done radio a lot and had a body of published work, along with a valid ID. That seemed simple enough and they pushed it right through. But since that time, Twitter has become increasingly more aggressive in political terms. What if you’re “famous enough” to merit verification but you’re the wrong sort of person with the wrong sort of opinions. You might be able to prove indisputably that you are who you claim to be, but if you’ve tweeted too many things in opposition to abortion or in favor of secure borders, might you suddenly not make the cut? If you think that’s crazy, you haven’t been following the Twitter news very closely.
I can’t see much harm in having them restart the program, I suppose. But at the same time, it will be so incredibly easy to politicize it and turn it into yet another hot mess that I’m not going to be getting my hopes up.
