Twitter may be the most democratic platform of expression we have nowadays. The most unknown person with 50 followers can go viral innocuously, reaching millions of people. My mentor calls it “grassroots tweeting.”
Besides the ability to reach legions of people, Twitter also allows us to choose who sees what we tweet, and to carefully curate our feeds, much thanks to the mute, block, and list features.
Yet, trolls manage to slip through the cracks. So here enters verification. Twitter verification has been around for over a decade, since summer 2009. The platform has flip-flopped on the purpose of the coveted blue check. Here is the original why: “To establish authenticity of identities on Twitter. The verified badge helps users discover high-quality sources of information and trust that a legitimate source is authoring the account’s Tweets.” Indeed, after several individuals complained about impersonation on Twitter, including Kanye West, verification was more about literally verifying that people were who they claimed to be (especially media, celebrity, and other public-facing accounts), since anonymity too, is one of the perks of…
