"Verified" ceased to be meaningful as actual verification as soon as "unverified" became a thing.

I think making it a brand-coloured tick conveyed too much of a positive message so people took it as an endorsement, leading to pressure to "unverify" if that person did or said something bad.

Given that action, the "verified" tick then becomes an even stronger signal of endorsement.

Perhaps it would be better to call them "Partners" like on Twitch and make it an explicit contract with revenue kickback.

They have painted themselves into a corner with this feature. They cannot call it "partners" because you cannot claim to have a partnership with, say, the US Navy and the President of Iran (both "ticked" in Twitter) nor give them revenue kickbacks, and yet, it's not really an ID verification if you "de-verify" people for their political or commercial stance. AFAIK Twitter is so confused by this conundrum that they just froze the "tick" program (or so they claim).

Of course they could abandon all pretenses and just call it "ticked" accounts without saying what it means at all...

And those who lose that status, for whatever reason, will be the "ticked off" accounts.

I can think of one use case for de-verifying: when someone's account seems to have been hacked.

Ok, but when you lose your drivers’ license (or your “friend” “borrows” it) you don’t get your license suspended...

Your case would imply there is a confirmation interval... which I don’t think is the case.

Your passport is "unverified" when you report it stolen.

> I think making it a brand-coloured tick conveyed too much of a positive message so people took it as an endorsement

YouTube's check mark is a tiny unassuming grey thing, and they're going through the exact same process right now where they claim it's being construed as an endorsement.

I think it's being construed as an endorsement because they seem to be using it as an endorsement. Almost every platform has a very opaque process for how one gets verified, and it seems you need to have 100,000+ followers or be deemed to be important in the society to get your humanity verified.

I researched this for the 2018 Reverse Hackathon run by HackMentalHealth and found that in 2015, approximately 0.05% of Twitter accounts were verified (source: https://medium.com/@Haje/who-are-twitter-s-verified-users-af...). The source above has an even deeper breakdown on the verified users' backgrounds.

If they don't want it to be construed as an endorsement, they could let any user not only apply for verification, but actually verify their identity behind their accounts. Not force, but allow it. This could shift the percentage of verified accounts up to the point where they're not part of an exclusive 0.05% club.

If they keep at it 0.05% of the accounts that they deem to be worthy of being verified, then it sure seems like an intentional endorsement.

(my article: https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verif...)

Youtube recently decided to change their requirements to become verified. They emailed existing verified users that they no longer meet these requirements and therefore will loose the "verified" status.

Completely insane.

For what it’s worth, my understanding is they were actually trying to fix the situation but users conceptualize being “verified” as a sign of status and so got upset. A lot of YouTubers are currently “verified” for whom there is no risk of mistaking them for a clone account. The only real point is for YouTube to verify the channels of actual celebrities who will get lots of copycats and are known off the platform.

But if your ID has been "verified", why would you all of a sudden no longer be verified unless the verification was fraudulent?

To verify yourself on instagram etc. you need to submit identification etc. . Once you have done that there should be no reason to take that away from you if valid.

You are still you unless maybe you get married and your name changes which could require a re-verification and if the policy was changed that you don't qualify for verification it would be fair for you to be no longer verified.

> But if your ID has been "verified", why would you all of a sudden no longer be verified unless the verification was fraudulent?

From what I understands, the previous verification was merely reaching 100k, nothing more. I wouldn't call that fraudulent, but considering many people may expect it to means that their identity was actually verified by Youtube (and not that they simply reached a milestone in subscription), I wouldn't call that being verified.

> To verify yourself on instagram etc. you need to submit identification etc. . Once you have done that there should be no reason to take that away from you if valid.

I agree, but we aren't talking about Instagram now, but Youtube.

On YouTube can you set your name to anything, including the name of another channel. This leads to accounts with the same name and profile picture as the actual channel commenting on any popular video. These accounts typically have no subscribers as they are not channels of actual creators. Having 100K subscribers proves you are an actual channel with fans who will want to know if a comment posted under that name is the actual content creator.

> Having 100K subscribers proves you are an actual channel with fans who will want to know if a comment posted under that name is the actual content creator.

There's 2 issues here. First it doesn't means the subscribers are actually legit. You could see from time to time channel that can lose hundred thousands subscribers in a day because Youtube purged a bunch of fake accounts. It's harder to see now that Youtube abbreviate the subscriber count, but I remember, it wasn't something constant, it was sporadic.

Second, it's only true if the name is original. More and more channels reach the 100k everyday, it's just going to be harder and harder to make sure none of them try to impersonate someone else. If that stay the only thing needed to be "verified", you'll get someone that will get that "verified" status even though he isn't the one he is saying he is, that's just the good old Murphy's law for you.

As I said, verify tag make people believe that you have actually been verified. It does makes sense that you change your politic so that you actually verify people...

It's about what people know you from. If people know you from off platform, and they go to YouTube to see that same person, I can verify that. If your main platform is YouTube, then obviously you are you by definition, and verification carries no information.

Basically, if you were tasked with verifying KFC, you could check that the KFC on YouTube is indeed the fast food chain. If you were tasked with verifying PewDiePie, then what are you verifying?

I think the benefit of verifying someone nobody has heard of is that you know that they have submitted identification documents to YouTube, and are less likely to be scamming you, and could be sued.

I would certainly trust a verified user more for that reason.

What have they done wrong?

I searched and seems like the previous politic was to simply give the verified status if you reached 100k subscribers without any others verification. How is that verified in any way? Is that verification was merely to state that at least 100k people clicked a button? That would makes it a pretty bad verified status and pretty far from what anyone may expect it to verify. Considering Youtube only remove bots from time to time, it may not even be true.

They were never verified in the first place, removing them makes sense.

MXR mods had this exact problem on youtube.

Worse a musician I followed on Instagram got hacked. There's no way to report "This account has been hacked." or any sort of custom report. I had to pick a random one which was then denied. I don't understand why they don't have sane security settings for verified accounts, otherwise what's the point. The musicians a Christian to had gone to jail and used to do drugs and speaks out against those things, the person who took it over has 666 on their name and other inappropriate things which is adding salt to the wound.

If your account can get hacked and never retrieved, what's it worth being verified?

Consider also https://twitter.com/AlbertEinstein

It's not a long-dead scientist, but is still verified as such.

That is really disgusting that they are verifying dead people. Even though his estate authorized it, seems like a betrayal of his legacy to allow someone else to present their speech from him.

I hope the US soon passes legislation banning impersonation of the dead unless they explicitly authorized that use while alive.

Similarly Erica Garner's account is verified and was taken over by one of her friends after her death. Some controversy after account tweeted things in direct contradiction to what Garner said while alive.

It says it’s managed by his estate—it seems fine to me?

I disagree. I mean, it's fine that Einstein's estate is tweeting under his name, but that shouldn't satisfy Twitter's definition of verification. Verification means:

The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic. [0]

It's not authentically Albert Einstein (which is objective), nor do I see how his estate posting science news from who-knows-where is of public interest (this is subjective, and there is enough grey area that it makes for a weak policy).

If an account is verified, Twitter should also explain why. This explanation could be in the users' bio.

0 - https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/twitter-ve...

> They should change what they call verified to another label like “goodie two-shoes” instead.

I agree with your main point. On a tangent: I'm not sure "goodie two-shoes" is quite the right term.

I would argue that by helping to expose illegal actions by the U.S. government, Assange was a poster child for "goodies two-shoes".

I kind of get your point, but generally speaking a goodie two-shoes doesn’t rock the boat and is more of a pleaser (to authority).

"verified" has essentially become the social media equivalent of airline companies' "preferred members".

When will Twitter re-open verifying? It's been closed for 2 years...

Crummy Buzzfeed content drones with 5000 followers are getting verified.

Verification ticks are just a badge of being well connected, and approved. And having your tick removed is a way of saying that you have stepped out of line.

That's what worries me about verified. It's just a form of nepotism at the end of the day and they certainly prefer certain niches (Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the media industry, etc..) over others.

Also seems verified is fairly correlated with certain political ideologies - kind of feels like twitter is trying to direct conversation without taking responsibility for bias.

That sounds like the usual persecution complex of the anti establishment/alt right. If that where the case, Twitter would be very shitty at such job, since countless of them are verified. Notably including alex jones up to his ban.

Journalists of major publications and celebrities are pretty evenly verified. Maybe it's just the circles I follow, but I encounter a lot of random 'liberal centrist with a podcast who has written 2 op eds'-types that seem to be more famous on twitter than anywhere else.

People with the right connections are getting verified.

They still do it when they want to.

It's open, it's just that they no longer accept public requests.

Maybe "Trusted" could be be a better alternative to "Verified".

If a President were caught in a lie, would the "Trusted" status be removed? If not, what would the "Trusted" status even mean?

“Lie” is too strict. Everyone is caught making false statements. Everyone would get “distrusted.”

> Everyone is caught making false statements

That is too postmodern for my tastes. I would strongly argue that one can speak without making false statements, and would be very much in favor of some sort of fact-checking badge on social media. It would be difficult, but I really believe it would be worth it.

Who watches the watchers?

So far pretty much every fact checking organization, regardless of original intent, eventually succumbs to the temptation to bend their fact checking to their ideological preference.

There is no social media company that has the credibility to even be taken seriously as a impartial arbiter of fact.

Yet everyone does not like equally, not by a longshot. We have sites like snopes and polifact. Maybe not perfect, but better than postmodern nonsense like "there is no truth".

This elevation of the credibility of snopes and politifact would make it more damaging when they choose to editorialize.

People who share political ideologies with these sites tend to overestimate their accuracy and underestimate their displayed bias.

Or, you know, the truth leans heavily on one side, considering that there's not a single one even remotely relevant fact checking organization on the other one.

I assure you, if you believe this, you're being frequently misled.

Don't get me wrong, I think these sources are more accurate than many journalistic institutions, but they are not infallible or completely unbiased.

Did I claim that they were unbiased or did I claim that the concepts like truth, facts, and research lean heavily towards one side?

Authenticated?

Why not just "Influential" since that is all people really care about.

Ban him for what?

The checkmark status should be like that.

It should be like an voluntary stricter license with arbitrary conditions set on content creators.

They just need to articulate what those conditions are.

The lack of being direct is what is hurting them here, and also not communicating what “verified” actually means, because it doesnt mean “you are popular and important” it just means “you are an aspiring LA model or aspiring SF tech CEO that both perform for Saudi money”

"verified" means "good citizen of the platform"

Alternatively “top revenue generator, except where we disagree with them, except when we make special exceptions”.

To me it means "person full of their own self importance".

That might be necessary, but it's not sufficient; there are many users who are not "verified" who are very convinced of their own importance;)

Agreed, but a check mark confirms it for me.