Twitter has temporarily suspended account verification on its platform. Twitter claim that the verification process is broken and that account verifications are being confused as endorsements. The company says it is trying to resolve "confusion" around what it means to be verified.
Verification is a process that that gives public figures and celebrities a blue check mark next to their names. Introduced in 2009, it helps the public differentiate official profiles from fake ones that populate the micro-blogging platform. Twitter is also facing a lot of backlash as of late for promoting fake news, especially with respect to the US presidential elections.
This announcement comes after the social media platform faced immense backlash for verifying the account of the organiser - Jason Kessler- of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The rally, that took place in August, left one dead. The Daily Beast found out that Twitter had awarded the blue tick to Jason Kessler's account - who is a known white supremacist. Twitter on its behest pointed to its policies which claim that a badge is given if an account is of public interest.
Kessler had deleted his Twitter account in the past after insulting the protestor who had died at Charlottesville. He had also posted links to the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer's coverage of her death.
Twitter Support posted a tweet saying - "Verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance. We recognize that we have created this confusion and need to resolve it. We have paused all general verifications while we work and will report back soon"
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also weighed in on the matter - "We should've communicated faster on this (yesterday): our agents have been following our verification policy correctly, but we realized some time ago the system is broken and needs to be reconsidered. And we failed by not doing anything about it. Working now to fix faster."
Support for 50-character display names
In other Twitter related news, the micro-blogging platform has now more than doubled the display name character count to 50. This comes days after Twitter decided to allow 280 characters in a tweet for most users. Previously, twitter only allows 20 characters in display names which irked many users.
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