[xnorswap]

Even before the takeover accounts could be "unverified", which makes a mockery of the concept of verification.

Verification should always have been "This is who they say they are", not an endorsement.

The "algorithm" boosting tweets from verified accounts also showed it was an endorsement rather than verification.

When people lost verification for being distasteful, it reinforced the blue checkmark as being an endorsement.

The takeover sold-out the "value" build up from blue checkmarks by just straight up selling them. It explicitly made the platform "Pay for reach".

[dfxm12]

Even before the takeover accounts could be "unverified", which makes a mockery of the concept of verification.

Why? Accounts can be sold/hacked, and there is a lot of that on social media. A verified account may even be a higher value target for some of the reasons you're bringing up, like algorithm boosts, verifications being considered an endorsement. In either case, unverification not only makes sense, but should be expected.

[xnorswap]

I knew a pedant would get me on that.

I'm talking about people, who are still verifiably the same people, becoming unverified.

Yes, where accounts have changed hands, or changed identity, they should be unverified.

That's actually one of the cases where twitter did not un-verify. Accounts "earned" the blue-check then changed identity to something else, appearing "verified" as that new identity.

[dfxm12]

If that's what you were talking about, you should have said that. Accounts are not people. This is not pedantry (and calling me names doesn't prove anything, either).

[xnorswap]

I did say that, it's the very next line:

> Verification should always have been "This is who they say they are", not an endorsement

[dfxm12]

Both syntax and context only support the "they" here to refer to "accounts" as used in your previous sentence.

[spacebanana7]

If I’m able to register a company with a name that matches your username, should I be able to get a verified account with the handle “real_xnorswap”?

Such things could be ripe for abuse. Although to be fair a social media platform might be able to push some of the blame onto the corporate registries.

[xnorswap]

If you're not claiming to be me, then I can't see why you shouldn't be able to use the name xnorswap, especially if that's your company name. I don't own the name, and if you have your own presence under that name, I can't see the issue.

Even trademarks only cover a company's particular domain. See the long history of Apple Corps vs Apple Computers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

In my view this is how verification ought to work:

- A user writes a bio / about field

- A trust provider verifies that bio is factual

- Any change to that bio will cause their bio to become unverified until it can be re-verified. ( The bio change can be held back until verification can complete. )

- An appeals process exists

How "trust providers" are established without leading to excess centralisation is a difficult problem. This is especially true given that like moderation, it's an expensive thing to do.

There is the possibility of trust-chains such as the way Lobsters works, but there's a exposed to the masses I suspect that people just mass-verify everything without any checking.

In reality you'd be left with one or two central pillars that people trust, and everything else which people don't.

There's also the danger that too much verification leaves new users in the cold. If 90% of genuine users are "verified", then a brand new user doesn't have much chance of making it through filters to become known enough to hope for verification, and will find themselves ignored and effectively locked out. ( This is already the case for some platforms where you're effectively required to give your phone number else end up in the "probably a bot" pile and de-facto shadow-banned. )