Twitter, verification, and the blue check mark

I have thoughts.

I appreciate Twitter. It’s far from perfect, and certain aspects of it can be absolutely toxic. But I also think it’s a great source of communication and information. I like curating my feed with a variety of voices, and many of those come with the blue check mark indicating that the user I follow is “verified.” Initially, I never gave those much thought. They became helpful when spam and imitation accounts began to crop up, and the blue check would let you know that you were actually reading posts from the person that you thought you were.