
Twitter Verification - QAPereo
https://xkcd.com/1914/
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imron
That Julian Assange isn't verified yet is an absolute joke.

Whatever else you think about him, he is still a person of significant
influence in the world, and there are dozens of fake accounts pretending to be
his that regularly fool news outlets.

This is the very use case that the verification system was designed for, and
yet still no verification.

~~~
herval
Twitter doesn’t verify people - people reach out, then get verified. It’s
likely he just never tried?

~~~
imron
Nope, he's tried (and has been trying for a while [0]), and he regularly calls
Twitter out for it and the trouble it causes him due to news outlets getting
confused by impersonators.

0:
[https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/841636931666612225](https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/841636931666612225)

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malvosenior
Ive noticed _a lot_ of random business people seem to be verified. It’s become
a meaningless (or negative) signal for me. Basically it says: I know someone
at Twitter!

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Haul4ss
Eh, I understand why it made sense to denote official accounts of well-known
people and organizations in Twitter's early days, and also why it doesn't make
sense anymore.

The culture of the platform and the world it exists in have changed, why
shouldn't policy change to reflect that?

~~~
imron
> and also why it doesn't make sense anymore.

Why doesn't it make sense anymore?

~~~
Haul4ss
People understand the platform better, no need to lure famous people to the
site, there are other ways to verify (e.g., link to twitter account on web
page), many more people across the spectrum of "famous" so it's hard to button
down who/what is famous enough for the checkmark, global audience means famous
in one place != famous in another, no consistency in how verified actually
works, verified accounts became Star-Bellied Sneetches, etc.

~~~
imron
The verified system isn't about luring people to the site, it's about making
sure certain accounts can't be impersonated.

The problem is that Twitter doesn't verify consistently, but it's is still an
important feature, e.g. Imagine the mischief that could be caused if there was
no way to tell which of several accounts was the real Donald Trump.

~~~
Haul4ss
Except that you would know which account was the real Donald Trump, because
Donald Trump would be on TV telling you so.

Extremely well-known figures have other ways to let you know which account is
theirs. The harder set of people are the sort of low-to-medium famous. Or
locally famous, not globally famous. The verified system has never worked well
for that group anyway.

~~~
imron
And yet every other week there's another news outlet publishing tweets from
"Julian Assange" that aren't actually from Julian Assange (here's one from
last week [0]), because twitter refuses to verify him and the people copying
his account do it very well.

Now imagine that at the presidential level. No thanks.

0:
[https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/927671065379262465](https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/927671065379262465)

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bobbytherobot
The historical problem with the Twitter verified system is they used it as the
database of accounts you may want to follow when you joined. Those are really
two different things.

