A recent blog post by Andrew Kurjata asks some questions that many people have considered. Why does Twitter’s explanation of the sort of people who can be ‘verified’ not include scientists or knowledge brokers? Are politicians, singers and actors more worthy of public interest than scientists? No, of course they’re not. So why are we putting so much faith in the blue tick in the first place?

When I joined Twitter a few years ago individuals couldn’t ask to be verified. Instead, Twitter would “reach out” to eligible accounts when the time was right. I distinctly remember the words used. How snobby, I thought. The implicit assumption was that “reaching out” would occur when the account was deemed famous enough.

Now, the policy has changed, probably because Twitter employees got sick of spending all day reaching out to famous people on Twitter. Now anyone can ask for a blue tick of approval (but not everyone gets it).

Does this change the distribution of people that get verified? As with most awards and honours, women, minorities, or introverts are less likely to self-nominate for prestige, even if they righteously deserve it. Continue reading →