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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

Twitter users love changing their profile picture/name to support the current cause of the moment so much that it’s become a meme. Changing that would piss off their active posters.

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No problem: add a second line with the verified name, or put the verified name in hover text if it differs from the display name. The verified name could still be a pseudonym, but it couldn't change without going through the verification process again.

Also, anyone willing to go through the verification process should get a blue check. Right now it's dependent on some Twitter insider liking the account holder (the insanely bullshit "Notable" requirement).

This is already the case, the verified name is the account name, which is always displayed just below the nickname. What's your plan? Add a 3rd name?

Remove nicknames.

“There are 44,935 people named John Smith in the United States.”

https://alexaanswers.amazon.com/question/24Ryred578w14fHwRNC...

This is obviously not true, unless I'm misunderstanding something. I'm not a twitter scientist, but I don't know what an "account name" is, unless it's the twitter handle. The twitter handles of blue checks are verifiably not required to have any relationship to a name that anyone knows them by, so are not a "verified name."

> I don't know what an "account name" is, unless it's the twitter handle

So, you know perfectly well and understood perfectly my point.

You'd still have edge cases where a change in verified name is needed (marriages, avoiding deadnaming, etc). A solution like this might narrow the problem space, but it doesn't solve the issues.

> or put the verified name in hover text if it differs from the display name

This isn't really a solution, because it's already "obvious" that it's the wrong user if you're looking closely. The UI shows "Vitalik.eth [verified checkmark] @scamusername" so you can see that @scamusername is not @vitalik. The problem is that you shouldn't need to look at the light text or hover to see that a verified user is who they say they are, the UI should make it completely clear.

Annoying such people is probably a price worth paying: https://news.sky.com/story/tories-criticised-for-misleading-...

Pretty simple to solve - change your profile pic/name, lose blue checkmark until you get verified again.

This is kind of how Scruff (gay dating app) works. Change your profile pic? Lose your verified status and have to go thru verification again.

That would kill a lot of Twitter culture though (for better or worse). Changing a name for "spooky season", updating a profile pic to promote a new event, etc. It also would make it risky for a large company to change their logo (if Volvo loses verification for a few days it opens them up to a ton of scams).

Seems like a minor inconvenience compared to what's going on right now. Maybe allow changing avatar without losing the badge but not the name.

> the current cause of the moment

Doesn't even need to be a cause - it's almost October, which means it's "change it to a spooky pun of your regular name" season.

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