Rethinking Twitter Verification

I have my Twitter Tick™ because I'm a mediocre white man in the tech industry. No joke. During one of Twitter's periodic bouts of opening up their verification programme, I applied and basically said "Don't you know who I am??!" and got it. Sucks to be anyone other than me, I guess.

Twitter has paused the Verification process for now. In part, I suspect, due to overwhelming false positives and negatives.

The main problem, I think, is that no one knows what "Verified" means. Is the user a celebrity? A journalist? A spoof account? A friend of Twitter's CEO? It's all so unclear.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

@Nevali @SophieWarnes @katebevan if I were in charge (which I'm not) there would be various types of ticks.
🤖 is a bot
🆔 proved their legal identity
🏭 is run by a brand
⚖ is run by a government department
👮 Official law enforcement
😎 Celebrity
And so on.

---

It seems to me that the answer is expanding Verification to take into account the different types of users of Twitter.

The Mastodon social network has the concept of "Bot" accounts. They are clearly marked as robots and that lets users know they're interacting with a non-person.

Lots of journalists get verified by Twitter - because Twitter wants to integrate with newsrooms. Should a junior fashion reporter at the South Nowhere Bugle get the same sort of tick as the Chief Political Correspondent of the world's biggest news show? It's egalitarian, to be sure, but it doesn't help a user determine if the Verified account Tweeting about Afghanistan is a credible source. Once the journo leaves the industry and becomes a pizza delivery driver, do they keep their tick?

I've written before about people talking to fake customer services on Twitter. Scammers pose as @Bank_0f_ANNER1CA and try to con people out of money. If brands had a big "Verified Brand" or "Certified Bank" label, that would make it harder for scams to proliferate.

I currently work for a Government department (this is a personal blog) - and it can be easy for our departments and initiatives to get Verified. But, again, what does that mean? Twitter does occasionally add "this is a state-affilliated account" labels:

I've no idea what the process is for that - nor how accounts apply or are verified - but it shows it can be done.

Is that really a Mr Feynman on Twitter? Or a cheap numbers-pumping account?

Yes, it spoils the joke if you give satirical accounts a big disclaimer - but it prevents users getting confused and upset.

Twitter has never really known what it is for. That's part of the joy of it - lots of weird experiments unconstrained by a singular product vision. But it is clear that users want to understand who they're interacting with.

My suggestions aren't set in stone, and they certainly haven't been tested with any users. And, obviously, I have no power to change Twitter's roadmap. But I think it's time Twitter spoke to its users and understood what they want out of a Verification programme.