Twitter to Restart Account Verification Program in Early 2021

After three years of pausing its public account verification program, Twitter has officially revealed plans to relaunch the program with new guidelines in early 2021. Apart from the blue verified badge, Twitter is also planning to add new account types and labels.

According to Twitter’s proposed verification policy, the company will open verification requests for the following types of accounts: government, companies, brands and non-profit organizations, news, entertainment, sports, activists, organizers, and other influential individuals.

Twitter has outlined specific requirements for being eligible to get verified in its draft policy. For instance, the company requires individual artists, performs, or directors to have a website with a verified identity, 5 production credits on IMDB profile, or 3 featured references within the 6 months in news outlets. You can take a look at the entire policy here.

Twitter admits that ‘there are many verified accounts on Twitter who should not be’. In an attempt to reduce this, the social media company aims to automatically remove verification from inactive accounts or if the profile is incomplete. The company may also deny or remove verification if the user repeatedly violates the platform’s rules.

“We know we can’t solve verification with a new policy alone — and that this initial policy won’t cover every case for being verified — but it is a critical first step in helping us provide more transparency and fairer standards for verification on Twitter as we reprioritize this work,” says Twitter in its blog post.

The company is currently running a survey on its policy for user feedback. You can also tweet your feedback with the hashtag #VerificationFeedback until the 8th of December. After reviewing public feedback, Twitter plans to introduce the final policy on the 17th of December.