Many respectable and even well-known people still haven’t received a verification from Twitter, yet Jason Kessler did on Tuesday. Kessler’s claim to fame is being the white supremacist who has helped organize racist rallies like the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virgnia.
Upon noticing the blue check mark next to his name, many people criticized Twitter. Although the social network says verification only signifies an account is legitimate, people often view it as an endorsement of sorts. When more respectable people haven’t been able to receive verification, users don’t think an individual like Kessler should.
Because of the uproar, the company is pausing the verification program. CEO Jack Dorsey says the “system is broken and needs to be considered.” Presumably it’ll either become more restrictive with verifications or it’ll ensure a larger percentage of the platform gets a check mark.
We should’ve communicated faster on this (yesterday): our agents have been following our verification policy correctly, but we realized some time ago the system is broken and needs to be reconsidered. And we failed by not doing anything about it. Working now to fix faster. https://t.co/wVbfYJntHj
— jack (@jack) November 9, 2017
