Twitter wants everyone to get a blue verification badge – Recode

Have you always wanted a blue Twitter verification badge? You’ll (eventually) be able to get one, according to CEO Jack Dorsey.

In a very casual Periscope livestream on Thursday, Dorsey said that he wants to verify everyone on Twitter, a continuation of the plan Twitter laid out a few years ago when it asked users to apply for verification online.

That program as been suspended since the fall, when Twitter got major backlash for verifying a few white supremacists. But it appears that Dorsey is open to relaunching some version of it once Twitter figures out how it should work.

“The intention is to open verification to everyone,” Dorsey said from a conference room at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. “And to do it in a way that is scalable [so] we’re not in the way and people can verify more facts about themselves and we don’t have to be the judge and imply any bias on our part.”

Indeed, while regular Twitter users probably understand what this means, most don’t. I’m verified on Twitter; when they opened it up, I requested verification as a journalist, and was accepted in less than 24 hours. But I know other journalists who have much higher profiles, and more followers than me, who were refused.

It would make sense if everyone had to be verified, but I find it hard to imagine that they’ll be able to do this. This requires checking information about millions of people’s, and it can’t be done by an algorithm.

Source: Twitter wants everyone to get a blue verification badge – Recode