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Comment by imbnwa | Hacker News Reader

Anyone has been able to apply for verification[0] since 2016, I think Musk is just paywalling the feature. I haven't seen it officially said anywhere that the subscription means you won't be checked for impersonation unless I've missed something.

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/07/19...

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Worth pointing out is that although anyone can apply, Twitter has been very selective regarding approval and it's been more of a "Twitter approves of your content" rather than them verifying your identity.

For example: @disclosetv, they have 1M followers, tonnes of articles / media about them, public org and related paperwork, yet they have been rejected 10+ times (IIRC). They mainly repost/cover news that isn't widely covered in MSM/social media.

Meanwhile, random Buzzfeed contributor #9432, 40-view political Twitch streamer #347, satire-account pretending to be a crazy right-winger #12..

When they started removing checkmarks from accounts for unapproved behavior, it stopped being about verification and started being about Twitter's endorsement of the account.

That was a huge unforced error, and its eventually led to this.

However, I think the right thing to do now is to remove the checkmark entirely and not claim Blue accounts are verified if they are in fact not verified.

Musk seems to be compounding a new error on top of the old errors.

Seems like he's making it more of a "verified human" mark as a bot-farm is not going to pay for 1000 marks that can get banned. Not to mention backend protections such as 1 mark per creditcard, or checking the name of the holder against the account etc. might be somewhat effective at reducing spam..

Boy was I wrong here

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