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'Verified' Is Now a Derogatory Term on Twitter (theoutline.com)
From an article on The Outline: Since 2009, Twitter has added a blue checkmark symbol to certain accounts that have been deemed "verified," which means "that an account of public interest is authentic," according to Twitter. For some, the verified distinction is coveted. For others, it's become a dirty word. "Verifieds" or "blue checks" are the elite, the establishment. Since many members of the media are verified, they have also become associated, for some, with the perceived liberal bias of the fourth estate. Conservatives, alt-righters, and Donald Trump fans have noticed that when Trump tweets, there is invariably a flood of "blue check liberals" responding in a negative way. There is also the perception that Twitter, a California company, is biased toward liberals. Also, according to Twitter, there are now about 250,000 people who're verified on the site, some of which are for unknown reasons.
The biases of Twitter can be quite easily seen by looking at the "Safety Council", tasked with keeping Twitter free of undesireables.
( https://about.twitter.com/safe... )
Furthermore, it is quite telling that Twitter punished notorious troll and agitator Milo Yiannopoulos by removing his verified tag. Why would they do that if the tag was only there to assert that the account was in fact verified as belonging to the real Milo Yiannopoulos?
The check-mark is there to say "Yep, this person is this person" and that's supposed to be it. However, we've seen twitter remove people's check-marks as some form of punishment in the past. That person's account has not been taken over, the legitimacy of the person is not being questioned, just the behavior. So why remove the check-mark?
> Not widely. I've never heard of this.
I thought not. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you.
Seriously though, you should have.
A couple years ago Twitter began revoking blue check marks from the trolly right wingers. Prior to this, the blue check mark just meant "this person is who they purport to be" with a twinge of "...and is important enough that we verified that fact". When they started revoking blue check marks, it added a new piece to it, "...and we editorially support what they say, in some fashion, because if we did not, we would have revoke their check mark".
At this point, it was fully politicized, but it was not discussed that widely. But once Twitter had made this editorial decision to "demote" those whose views they disliked, but had broken no terms of service, the next logical question would be to select the second-most-trolly right winger and ask, well ok, why do THEY have a blue check still? Do you guys agree with them?
This double meaning, and the twitter management wading into political debate, really hurts trust in their system*. There's also accusations of them handling political tweets that they disagree with differently- pushing them out to users at different times, claiming a tweet isn't found, etc. Unlike the blue check thing, which is very obviously top down policy, this one may just be a conspiracy theory (and maybe in fact just due to the fact that twitter's infrastructure is duct tape apparently). However, it's a lot more plausible than it was before they started doing this.
Another semi-conspiracy is that the anti-Trump tweets that respond to every Trump tweet and are always listed at the top are, in some sense, "rigged". This one also can't be shown to be true, but again, is more plausible given the provable side twitter has taken.
Basically, twitter not only has an agenda, but this has resulted in a bunch of claims that are plausible instead of laughable.
*I don't exactly know why anyone ever assumed that twitter would be an open platform without their own corporate and personal agenda, but apparently a ton of people made that assumption, and now are shocked to find that that was not the case.