Nearly everyone I interacted with on Twitter (pre-Musk) got their verification badge by essentially being in the San Francisco tech community.
No matter how prominent someone might be on this side of the Atlantic, it never mattered, meanwhile mid-managers and coders at no-name startups had blue checks because, I mean, they knew someone at Twitter- and who else is verifying people? I don’t really fault them for verifying people they personally knew.
But it meant that you had a situation where (and no offence meant to them) “nobodies” (as in, non-promenant figures) were “in the club” with heads of state, companies and heads of industry.
So there was a definite whiff of nepotism, because it was a de-facto status symbol.
Yep, same with "journalists". Publication companies were given a fast-track process that basically allowed them to hand out verifications to anyone who ever had a byline with them. The most reliable way to get verified was to sell some words to an online news website. It didn't matter how notable you or the publication were.
When GP says "that’s not true though" I can't even tell which part he is talking about. This is fairly recent and well-documented stuff.
No matter how prominent someone might be on this side of the Atlantic, it never mattered, meanwhile mid-managers and coders at no-name startups had blue checks because, I mean, they knew someone at Twitter- and who else is verifying people? I don’t really fault them for verifying people they personally knew.
But it meant that you had a situation where (and no offence meant to them) “nobodies” (as in, non-promenant figures) were “in the club” with heads of state, companies and heads of industry.
So there was a definite whiff of nepotism, because it was a de-facto status symbol.