Jane Manchun Wong, a reverse engineer who unearths distinctive features in various social media apps that are not yet officially rolled out, has reported recently that Twitter is working on “Request Verification.” This is great news but as per Wong, this feature is still in the testing phases, and it is not known when it will be released for public.
She posted a screenshot on Twitter showing the existence of this feature in the form of a ‘Request Verification’ option found under Account > Personal Information.
In 2016, Twitter had started verifying the account requests by users, and all the verified accounts received a visual prominence on the platform. Now, the fact of the matter is that account verification is considered as a status symbol, and the public started to perceive it as an endorsement.
Due to the visual prominence that these verified accounts received on Twitter, this impression of endorsement became further ingrained and to avoid it all, Twitter stopped verifying the accounts altogether by 2017.
According to Twitter, they believe that their halting the account verification process was done because it felt like an endorsement to the general public, and this was an issue that they should have addressed even earlier. However, stopping this process does not mean that everything goes unchecked.
As per the sources, they started working on a better authentication and verification process back in 2017, which is most likely going to get released now under the hood of the ‘Request Verification’ option.
Also, they are making sure that the account checking process is stricter so that when an account gets the status of being ‘verified,’ the verification badge does not feel like an endorsement.
This sounds a good approach and not so overwhelming too. But Twitter has not released any official statement in this regard about this feature and its release date. But its release is going to be a good thing nonetheless because there has to be a proper check and balance mechanism while accepting account requests.
Other apps also have some kind of verification and authentication process for new accounts. Facebook provides a fairly advanced authentication process and that does give a sense of security to the users.
These processes are important, but there is no denying that they do overwhelm the users a lot. So, tech apps must try to make these processes as easy and functional as possible.
Read next: Twitter repeats its content policies
She posted a screenshot on Twitter showing the existence of this feature in the form of a ‘Request Verification’ option found under Account > Personal Information.
In 2016, Twitter had started verifying the account requests by users, and all the verified accounts received a visual prominence on the platform. Now, the fact of the matter is that account verification is considered as a status symbol, and the public started to perceive it as an endorsement.
Due to the visual prominence that these verified accounts received on Twitter, this impression of endorsement became further ingrained and to avoid it all, Twitter stopped verifying the accounts altogether by 2017.
According to Twitter, they believe that their halting the account verification process was done because it felt like an endorsement to the general public, and this was an issue that they should have addressed even earlier. However, stopping this process does not mean that everything goes unchecked.
As per the sources, they started working on a better authentication and verification process back in 2017, which is most likely going to get released now under the hood of the ‘Request Verification’ option.
Also, they are making sure that the account checking process is stricter so that when an account gets the status of being ‘verified,’ the verification badge does not feel like an endorsement.
This sounds a good approach and not so overwhelming too. But Twitter has not released any official statement in this regard about this feature and its release date. But its release is going to be a good thing nonetheless because there has to be a proper check and balance mechanism while accepting account requests.
Other apps also have some kind of verification and authentication process for new accounts. Facebook provides a fairly advanced authentication process and that does give a sense of security to the users.
These processes are important, but there is no denying that they do overwhelm the users a lot. So, tech apps must try to make these processes as easy and functional as possible.
Read next: Twitter repeats its content policies
