© bob al-greene / mashable
Twitter 'paused' verification to fix it, but it's still verifying thousands of accounts.
Jack Dorsey's mother and father, the '80s band Whitesnake, a "war room" associated with Donald Trump's reelection campaign - these are a few of the more than 10,000 accounts Twitter has quietly verified in recent months, despite putting its verification program on hold.
The company has said little publicly about verification, which it suspended in 2017 following backlash over its verification of a white supremacist. But data viewed by Mashable suggests the company is verifying a flurry of accounts each month despite the supposed break.
Celebrities, and others with backchannel connections to the company, are able to become verified as Twitter ignores everyday users and those without insider access. In many ways, this secretive process is now more opaque and unfair than it was when anyone could apply on Twitter's website. At a time when Twitter says it's trying to be more transparent about its rules, the lack of an official verification policy is hurting groups already susceptible to abuse, critics say.
On its official
FAQ page, Twitter states "our verified account program is currently on hold. We are not accepting any new requests at this time." Despite the lack of an official request form, the company has continued to verify new accounts for more than a year. Some, such as the survivors of
the Parkland shooting, or Patriots quarterback
Tom Brady, have been well publicized. But many more have flown under the radar, such as
Tim and
Marcia Dorsey, the parents of Twitter's CEO, both of whom got a blue check at some point in the last four months.
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