Twitter Relaunch Verification In The Next Couple of Days

A couple of weeks ago, Twitter announced that they are planning to bring back their public verification program in 2021, where they shared a draft of their new policy and asked for public feedback to shape their approach.

As in this era, Public feedback has become a critical part of the policy and development process, because they are the ones who will be using it.

How your feedback shaped their policy

Here are some of the areas they have updated new verification policy based on public feedback:

1. Some of the criteria for a profile to be considered “complete” feels too restrictive, so they have updated their definition to no longer require a profile bio or header image.

2. They updated their references to Wikipedia to better align with the encyclopedias' published standards for notability and article quality.

3. They have clarified the titles of the “News” category to include “News and Journalists” and the “Sports” category to include “Sports and esports'' to be more inclusive. Where they also added a reference in the “Entertainment” category to more clearly include digital content creators.

4. Measuring the minimum follower count requirement on a per-country basis wasn’t always the right approach, so They’ve updated this to be on a per-region basis to make our follower count requirements less susceptible to spam and more equitable across geographies.

Many suggested adding categories for verification including academics, scientists, and religious leaders, and plan to explore adding dedicated categories for these to the policy sometime next year. Until then, any of these individuals may qualify under the “Activists, organizers, and other influential individuals” category.

For example, since March 2020, they have been working with global public health authorities to identify experts tweeting about COVID-19 and have already verified hundreds of accounts as a part of this collaboration. These verification's will not be impacted by the new policy given the ongoing commitment to elevating credible information as it relates to the current public health crisis.

You can read their new verification policy, or you can tap on the blue verified badge in-app or on the web to learn more.

They will begin enforcing this policy on January 22, 2021, which is also when they will begin automatically removing the verified badge from inactive and incomplete accounts. The new policy defines a complete account as one that has all of the following:

1: Verified email address or phone number

2: Profile image

3: Display name

If your account is at risk of losing its verified badge, you’ll receive an automated email and an in-app notification informing you of what changes need to be made to avoid automatic removal of your blue verified badge. As long as you make those changes before January 22, 2021, your account will not lose its badge.

They are not planning to automatically remove the verified badge from inactive accounts of people who are no longer living and are working on building a way to memorialize these accounts in 2021.

Under their policy, they may also remove verification from accounts that are found to be in severe or repeated violation of the Twitter Rules. They will continue to evaluate such accounts on a case-by-case basis and will make improvements in 2021 on the relationship between enforcement of their rules and verification... As always, everyone on Twitter is subject to the Twitter Rules, and you can read more about our range of enforcement actions.

How to apply for verification in 2021

They are excited to relaunch public applications for verification in 2021 through a new, self-serve application process that will be available on the Account Settings page on the web and in-app.

The process will include asking applicants to select a category for their verified status and confirming their identity via links and other supporting materials.

They plan to use both automated and human review processes to ensure that they are reviewing applications thoughtfully and on time.

They are also planning to give people the option to share demographic information after completing the new verification application so that They can better measure and improve the equity of their verification process.

What’s next?

Verification is just one part of their work to help people understand who they’re interacting with on Twitter. They know that it’s not always easy to evaluate the authenticity of accounts on the internet, and that understanding who you’re interacting with is core to the public conversation.

When it comes to helping people trust who they’re interacting with on Twitter, bios, This is why they started rolling out profile labels for political candidates, government accounts, and state-affiliated media. In addition to the changes they are making as they are introducing a verification system, and also working on new ways to designate different account types, starting with:

Automated Accounts: Accounts that post to Twitter automatically, also called bots, can bring a lot of value to the service when they share things like earthquake reports or self-care reminders. But it can be confusing to people if it’s not clear that these accounts are automated. In 2021, They’re planning to build a new account type to distinguish automated accounts from human-run accounts to make it easier for people to know what’s a bot and what’s not.

Memorial Accounts: They know how important it is to preserve a Twitter account in memory of someone who has passed and they’ve talked about building Memorial Accounts before. In 2021, they’re planning to build a new account type specifically designed for memorialized accounts.

They are excited to relaunch verification and start rolling out these new account types, and They’ll share more soon. They had originally planned to begin enforcing this policy on January 20, 2021, but They have changed the date to January 22, 2021.