Twitter's Verified Badge Removal System 'Prone' to Breakage

pcmag.com:

Twitter’s removal of legacy blue check marks is a lengthy manual process powered by a system prone to breaking, The Washington Post reports(Opens in a new window). 

In March, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced that legacy verified checkmarks would be removed starting April 1, though they continue to be in place.

According to former employees who spoke to the Post, the removal of verification badges draws on a large internal database similar to an Excel spreadsheet that has a history of breaking. When the database broke, preventing employees from removing verified badges, workers reportedly had to “explore workarounds.”

Thereport adds that there was no way to reliably remove badges en masse, which meant that workers would have to remove check marks from spam accounts on a case-by-case basis. The process “was all held together with duct tape,” the source, a former Twitter employee, told the Post. 

Robyn Caplan, a senior researcher studying verification systems across social media sites told the Post that the transition to a purely paid system for blue checkmarks would take a “much longer” time than thought.

Elon Musk last week defended the move to drop legacy verified checkmarks as being about “treating everyone equally(Opens in a new window)” adding that “there shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities.”

Twitter, which now replies to press emails with a poop emoji, did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request for comment.

Meanwhile, The White House has told its staff that it won’t pay for their Twitter profiles to continue to be verified ahead of the company removing legacy verified checkmarks. 

In a Friday email sent to staffers by White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty said: “It is our