Jack Dorsey says Twitter is working on getting users to verify themselves; product director says it would help users spot suspicious accounts easier
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a Periscope livestream today that the company is working to allow any user to become verified.
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-crisis for Twitter's verification program: in November 2017 the company paused new verifications entirely and unveiled rules allowing verified status to be revoked, then quietly resumed verifying accounts in January 2018 while promising a rebuilt authentication program. Dorsey's Periscope announcement is the first time the CEO has framed the endgame as open access — any user able to verify — with the product team pitching it as a safety feature that makes suspicious accounts easier to spot.
The longer arc confirms this was a pivot point, not a one-off: by June 2020 Twitter was drafting a revamped system with publicly documented guidelines and an in-app request flow, and by late 2020 it committed to a relaunch across six categories including news, companies, and government officials.
First-order effects
- Verification stops being a scarce badge handed out at Twitter's discretion and becomes a self-serve credential any user can pursue, directly answering the account-authenticity complaints that forced the November 2017 pause.
- Twitter's own product leadership reframes the checkmark's purpose from conferring prominence to flagging authenticity — a definitional shift that changes what users should infer when they see one.
Second-order effects
- Once anyone can apply, Twitter needs enforceable public criteria to avoid arbitrary grants and revocations — which is exactly where the program ends up in the 2020 revamp with documented guidelines and an in-app request option.
- A self-serve checkmark dilutes its value as a status marker, pushing Twitter toward supplementary trust signals like the profile-level phone-number verification label tested in 2022.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform identity fragments into layered signals — category badges, contact-info labels, application-based checks — rather than a single elite checkmark, making verification an ongoing policy apparatus instead of a perk.
- The recurring cycle of pause, promise, and partial relaunch suggests verification becomes a permanent governance battleground for social platforms, tied to how they police impersonation and suspicious accounts.
The trend: Social platforms are converting verification from an exclusive status marker into layered, self-serve identity infrastructure governed by published criteria.