Twitter to Relaunch Account Verifications in Early 2021

Twitter on Tuesday released plans for its new policy on how people are "verified" on the site, an area the company has long promised to revamp to address confusion and criticisms over the blue check-mark badges it uses to authenticate the identity of prominent accounts.

The social media company said in a blog post that it plans to relaunch its verification programme, including a new public application process, in early 2021. It said a public feedback period for the new policy would open on Tuesday and run until December 8.

Twitter said it paused public submissions for verification in 2017 after hearing feedback that the program "felt arbitrary and confusing to many people." It said at the time the check mark was being confused with "an endorsement or an indicator of importance."

A year later, Twitter said it was putting fixes to the verification programme on the back burner to focus on issues like election integrity, though it has continued to verify some accounts, such as medical experts tweeting about COVID-19 this year.

"Since then, we haven't been clear about who can become verified and when, why an account might be unverified, or what it means to be verified," Twitter said in the Tuesday blog post.

November 25, 2020