The little blue tick has come to mean a badge of honor on social media and twitter in particular. Achieving such anointed status has been previously been at the sole judgment of the twitter high-ups. However, that appears to be changing as Twitter are looking to launch a revamped verification system as Jane Manchun Wong has confirmed.
Tech Crunch has since elaborated on reverse engineer Wong’s claims. Twitter has confirmed the new verification system to gain a blue tick is to be launched but is not yet available to the public.
The new system will make public the guidelines surrounding gaining a blue tick. The aim behind this is to make the system more transparent and understandable as Twitter has come under fire for its decisions the past.
Twitter will bring back blue tick requests aka verification requests
Users will be able to request a Twitter blue tick in the account section of settings. A similar option used to be available to users to request verification.
However, Twitter took it down after the company was criticised for some of the individuals it had verified.
Most notably the company verified Jason Kessler, the organizer of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Following this Twitter said it would be pausing verifications while it figured out the problems with the system.
During the 2018 mid-term elections Twitter then announced it would be focusing on electoral integrity. The company has slowed the pace of verifications but some did continue. Elected officials became verified and more recently, as did experts tweeting factual information about Covid-19.
It seems now that the company has been able to totally overhaul the system. As a result, Twitter will be resuming the ability to request verification. However, this time around it will differ from the previous system with the guidelines becoming public.
Twitter to make verification guideliness public
Previously, Twitter had published internal guidelines surrounding verification. In this new system, they will be publicly published to ensure transparency and understanding about decisions.
Twitter has given no indication about when it will publish these guidelines or when the system itself will launch.
Twitter has come under fire in recent weeks from the likes of Ted Cruz calling for an investigation into the company. This follows the increasing tension building between President Trump and the social media company.
The President is angry about the application of fact-checking and the banning of certain accounts. It seems that any move towards more transparency from Twitter would be a good thing considering all the fire they are currently under.