Twitter Inc. halted a system for verifying user identity, calling it \u201cbroken” after the process became seen as a stamp of approval for trolls, white supremacists and others disseminating hateful speech online.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Twitter began placing a blue check mark on accounts of users whose identities had been verified — a way to help distinguish legitimate\u00a0accounts from bogus ones. The social-media company drew criticism for the process this week after it verified the account of Jason Kessler, who is credited with orchestrating the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August.<\/p>\n
Twitter originally verified accounts of \u201cpublic interests,\u201d such as journalists, public figures and celebrities. Many have interpreted the policy to mean that verification is an indicator of importance. The company has come under criticism for unclear disclosure of how verification is determined and inconsistent application of the marker.<\/p>\n
\u201cVerification was meant to authenticate identity & voice but it is interpreted as an endorsement,\u201d Twitter\u2019s user support division wrote in a tweet on Thursday. \u201cWe recognize that we have created this confusion and need to resolve it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey also weighed in, saying management should have communicated more quickly on its plans to fix the system. \u201cOur agents have been following our verification policy correctly, but we realized some time ago the system is broken and needs to be reconsidered,”\u00a0Dorsey wrote on his account. “We failed by not doing anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The controversy over verification is just the latest incident to spark criticism of Twitter. U.S. President Donald Trump uses the platform to make some statements that some experts argue violate Twitter\u2019s policies on harassment and abuse. Yet his account remains. The company has also been under the microscope for failing to prevent Russian interference on its platform during the U.S. 2016 presidential elections. The company recently testified to Congress, revealing that more than 36,000 Russian-linked accounts generated about 1.4 million automated, election-related Tweets.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the Charlottesville rally, which left a counter-protester dead, Kessler used his Twitter account to call the woman, Heather Heyer, \u201ca fat, disgusting Communist.\u201d \u201cLooks like it was payback time,\u201d he wrote, according to reports.<\/p>\n
Kessler currently tweets under the handle @TheMadDimension, and his account has a verified check mark. \u201cLooks like I FINALLY got verified by Twitter,\u201d he wrote Tuesday. \u201cI must be the only working class white advocate with that distinction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any user can apply for verification and Twitter has at times removed a user\u2019s verified status. Twitter removed the blue check mark from Milo Yiannopoulos, who BuzzFeed reported worked closely with white nationalists, before banning him from the platform last year.\u00a0Yiannopoulos\u00a0has rejected white nationalism in multiple talks and articles, according to a statement from Alexander Macris, chief executive officer of Milo Inc., Yiannopoulos\u2019s new business venture.<\/p>\n
Though Twitter has suspended several high-profile accounts associated with the alt-right movement, some white supremacist accounts are still active, including Richard Spencer\u2019s verified account.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019ve always said from the beginning that verification is not an endorsement, but a check mark in our culture does seem to convey that to many people,” said Stephen Balkam, founder of the Family Online Safety Institute, a nonprofit that\u2019s part of Twitter\u2019s Trust and Safety Council. “I can understand people\u2019s outrage over verifying someone like Jason Kessler, with a confederate flag behind him.”<\/p>\n
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has about 553,000 followers, had his verification request denied and called the decision \u201cabsurd\u201d on Twitter in March.<\/p>\n
Even some Twitter\u2019s employees acknowledge the company should have fixed the problem earlier. Ed Ho, general manager of Twitter\u2019s consumer product and engineering group, tweeted: “We should have stopped the current process at the beginning of the year. We knew it was busted as people confuse ID verification with endorsement.”<\/p>\n
Twitter Inc. halted a system for verifying user identity, calling it \u201cbroken”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":144773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[405,47210],"class_list":["post-236916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-twitter","tag-verification"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236924,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236916\/revisions\/236924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}