Twitter wants everyone to get a blue verification badge

Have you always wanted a blue Twitter verification badge? You’ll (eventually) be able to get one, according to CEO Jack Dorsey.

In a very casual Periscope livestream on Thursday, Dorsey said that he wants to verify everyone on Twitter, a continuation of the plan Twitter laid out a few years ago when it asked users to apply for verification online.

That program has been suspended since the fall, when Twitter got major backlash for verifying a few white supremacists. But it appears that Dorsey is open to relaunching some version of it once Twitter figures out how it should work.

“The intention is to open verification to everyone,” Dorsey said from a conference room at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. “And to do it in a way that is scalable [so] we’re not in the way and people can verify more facts about themselves and we don’t have to be the judge and imply any bias on our part.”

Part of the problem historically for Twitter’s verification policy is that it felt like a blue checkmark served as an endorsement by the company, like we approve of this user. That’s not what a verification is intended for, says David Gasca, one of Twitter’s product directors.

“The main problem is we use it to mean identity, but because of the way it was originally started, where it was only given to certain very large public figures, celebrities, etc., it came to have a lot of status associated with it, as well,” he said on the same Periscope as Dorsey. “They think of it as credibility. Twitter stands behind this person, Twitter believes that this person is someone that — what they’re saying is great and authentic, which is not at all what we mean by the checkmark.”

So Twitter is trying to figure out how to verify people, but also what verification means. Once it figures it out, you’ll get your blue checkmark.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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