Twitter relaunching public verification program on January 20, 2021
Twitter has announced that it will relaunch its public verification program on January 20, 2021, with a new self-serve application process set to launch on the Account Settings page on the web and in-app.
Screenshots showed earlier in the year that Twitter was testing a ‘Request verification’ button in its iOS app, with the company confirming last month that it intended to reopen verification applications in early 2021 after it paused requests three years ago.
Twitter outlined its criteria for verification in November, saying accounts must be “notable and active,” and represent either government officials; companies, brands and nonprofit organizations; news; entertainment; sports; and activists, organizers and other influential individuals.
At the time the company also announced that it would collect feedback on its verification policy, which it has now updated based on more than 22,000 survey responses. Twitter says it will begin automatically removing the verified badge from inactive and incomplete accounts starting next January, and that it will create new categories that will be eligible for verification throughout 2021.
Twitter says:
Here are some of the areas we’ve updated in our new verification policy based on your feedback:
- We heard feedback that some of the criteria for a profile to be considered “complete” feels too restrictive, so we updated our definition to no longer require a profile bio or header image.
- We updated our references to Wikipedia to better align with the encyclopedias’ published standards for notability and article quality.
- We’ve clarified the titles of the “News” category to include “News and Journalists” and the “Sports” category to include “Sports and esports” to be more inclusive. We also added a reference in our “Entertainment” category to more clearly include digital content creators.
- We heard feedback that measuring the minimum follower count requirement on a per-country basis wasn’t always the right approach, so we’ve updated this to be on a per-region basis to make our follower count requirements less susceptible to spam and more equitable across geographies.
You can read Twitter’s updated verification policy here.