“Verified” was never meant to mean “blindly trust this person”, it was meant to mean “this is the (notable/famous) person it says it is, not an impersonator”.
Some people put too much weight on it, and I partly blame Twitter for making it a status game (e.g. using verified status to influence ranking algorithms) and for kneecapping the security feature by allowing display name changes without further verification.
Rightly or wrongly, Twitter decided that there were certain classes of people--the mainstream famous, big media journalists, politicians--for whom it was important to know if tweets were really from that person or not. Not even past impersonation attempts were taken into account. However, as you say, it became a status thing with even people well-known in various communities with thousands of followers being algorithmically denied checks and taking it as a personal slight.
I just didn’t think having verified for press made much sense. Their opinions were/are as well informed as that of an average joe blue blow. A press tag wold have helped inform that they were also likely to be poorly informed.
Some people put too much weight on it, and I partly blame Twitter for making it a status game (e.g. using verified status to influence ranking algorithms) and for kneecapping the security feature by allowing display name changes without further verification.