Twitter Suspends Verification, Removes ‘Blue-Tick’ from Profiles

The verification process was halted after the handle of one of the organisers of Charlottesville rally got verified.

Twitter verified the account of Jason Kessler, one of the minds behind the Charlottesville rally in August.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Jason Kessler/The Quint)

After Twitter halted its verification process on 9 November, following an uproar for giving a blue-tick to Jason Kessler, who was one of the organisers of a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, it is now revoking the blue-tick from profiles altogether.

This comes as the social media platform was being accused of endorsing those with hateful views by giving them a ‘badge of authenticity’.

After the 32-yr-old Heather Heyer, a counter protestor in the August rally died, Kessler had taken to twiiter to call a “fat, disgusting communist” and said her death “was payback time.” He had later said that he had composed the tweet under the influence of drugs, reported Washington Examiner.

Also Read: Inside the Coming-Out of the American Nazi in Charlottesville

Twitter generally verifies accounts of people of "public interest" such as celebrities, journalists, politicians, among others. But they haven’t come up with a reason why they decided to verify Kessler's account.

In statement made from the official account of Twitter, it was reassured that verification was not meant as an endorsement of an individual but as a process to authenticate the identity of a person.

In a thread of tweets on 13 October, the Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had taken a resolution to wipe out violent groups, hate symbols and tweetes that glorify violence or unwanted sexual advances.

In the statement, the company said all general verifications would be stopped till the problem of a broken verification process is fixed.

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