The twitter check was, and was always supposed to be, a way to make people with the check feel special. Where the real journalism is done, their identity is confirmed by their publishers with bylines, not checkmarks. Confirming identity is not the purpose of checks; this is demonstrated by the fact that checkmark revocation is used as a punishment for breaking twitter rules, not when identity comes into question.

Social media isn't a newspaper, it's a skinner box. We'd all be better off if they all walked away from their tweeting addictions for real, instead of moving to a synthetic analogue to replace their clout addiction. Mastodon is methadone.

> The twitter check was, and was always supposed to be, a way to make people with the check feel special.

No, stop it. That kind of hyperbole isn't helping the discussion. It's very clear what the intent was behind verification. It's clear from the name itself; Twitter was quite clear about it at the time. And as pointed out, it's abundantly clear that it was serving exactly that need well, as the second it was modified people started getting fooled into selling the wrong drug stock!

I'm sorry you're upset at Twitter, but it doesn't help things by lying about their products.

The stated intent was what you say. The way it was practiced, they have a point. There were many cases of people being denied verification who could have badly needed it. Personally I noticed that about people affiliated with Wikileaks, many who I know asked for it and got rejections without explanation.

Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, Louis Farrakhan and Milo Yiannopolous are examples of people who lost their checkmarks not because Twitter started to doubt they were themselves, but because they were so loathed.

It was verification if you were important enough (based on whatever metrics) to be awarded verification. Therefore it's not surprising that some people explicitly denied verification after submitting documentation would take offense.

So what though? It's not a feature for them, it is (was) a feature for us, so we know who we're reading. The proper list of people who "need" verification are those who would otherwise be targets of impersonation. That's always going to be a subjective decision, and the poster herself is probably the worst possible judge of notability!

In my direct experience, having a few thousand followers can be plenty to get impersonated even though that doesn't in general pass Twitter notability filters--even when that impersonation had already happened (and the impersonator banned). So it was not a very good system. In fact, I have trouble coming up with good reasons--outside of cost--why someone shouldn't be able to get verified if they want/feel the need to be.

Julian Assange not only was denied a checkmark, Twitter refused to remove the account impersonating him.

The moment Assange lost access to his Twitter account though, and his friends (who had access to it, for just such an event) wanted to use it to call attention to his plight and campaign for its release, it was quickly suspended on the excuse that it wasn't him personally.

> It's very clear what the intent was behind verification

The use of checkmark revocation as a punishment proves that the intent of checkmarks was to reward people with a sensation of being special, not to verify their identity.

> lying

You think I'm wrong, therefore I'm lying? Lying is about intent. I think you're wrong but I don't think you're lying. I just think you're foolish.

You know that it is super normal for journalists to pitch their ideas to various journals? In fact, journalist remain the same journalist when moving from one job to another or when being between jobs. Or when moving for substack.

There is also zero reason to limit the term "journalist" to big institutions.