Twitter India on Friday said that its new verification policy will be implemented from January 20 and the company will begin automatically removing the verified badge from inactive and incomplete accounts. Under the new policy, Twitter may also remove verification from accounts that are found to be in severe or repeated violation of its rules. "We will continue to evaluate such accounts on a case-by-case basis, and will make improvements in 2021 on the relationship between enforcement of our rules and verification," Twitter India said in a blog post.
Twitter, which paused its public verification process or that elusive Blue Badge three years ago, last month announced to relaunch verification, including a new public application process, in early 2021. "If your account is at risk of losing its verified badge, you'll receive an automated email and an in-app notification informing you of what changes need to avoid automatic removal of your blue verified badge," the micro-blogging platform stressed. "As long as you make those changes before January 20, 2021, your account will not lose its badge". Twitter said it is not planning to automatically remove the verified badge from inactive accounts of people who are no longer living, and are working on building a way to memorialize these accounts in 2021.
Before it reopens the verification process that saw its share of controversies in the past couple of years, the micro-blogging platform has asked the public to share feedback on a draft of its new verification policy. In the two weeks during our public feedback period, Twitter received more than 22,000 survey responses.
"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," Twitter explained. People also suggested to add categories for verification including academics, scientists and religious leaders. Twitter said it plans to explore adding dedicated categories for these to the policy sometime next year. Until then, any of these individuals may qualify under the "Activists, organizers, and other influential individuals" category.
