In theory, Twitter’s blue “verified” check mark made it harder to impersonate famous people, but in practice it mostly showed who was famous enough to bother impersonating. Prepare for the badge of approval to stop mattering as much now that Twitter has opened up its once-mysterious verification process to everyone.
All you have to do is fill out this form and make sure your account has a verified phone number, bio, profile pic, birthday, website, and email.
Currently, less than 1 percent of users are verified. Twitter has been manually verifying new accounts for the past few years, and while that number might skyrocket now that the process is simple, the company says the mark is still reserved for accounts “determined to be of public interest.” So don’t worry, it’s unlikely your cousin’s account with three tweets in five years will get that coveted check mark.
But let’s be real: Getting “verified” has no upside other than the ego rush of...being verified. The only actual perk you get is the option to not see tweets from unverified accounts, which is pointless given how arbitrary verification has been in the past (plenty of worthwhile people aren’t verified) and fact that notorious trolls like the just-banned Milo Yiannopoulos had once been verified. If the one upside of a verified check mark still let in people like Milo, its usefulness is really doubtful.
All in all, lots of changes going on over at our favorite failing social-media site. Between shutting down ISIS accounts, taking down extremist tweets quickly, banning trolls, and opening verification to us little people, maybe the site is starting to suck a little less.