Media | Technology | Politics
Blue Checkmarks Are Now the Scarlet Letters of Social Media
Becoming verified was once coveted — now it’s scorned.
Becoming verified on Twitter or Instagram once meant something. It was the platform’s way of publicly attesting to your clout. You mattered, you stood out from the crowd. You made it — until 2022 that is.
Twitter verification began back in 2009 as the result of a lawsuit that St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa brought because of a fake account that was using his name to diminish the gravitas of drunken driving that was tied to two Cardinals pitchers losing their lives, thereby damaging his reputation. Although he didn’t settle the case with Twitter, he ultimately dropped the lawsuit.
He may have lost the legal battle, but in a sense, won the public-relations war, putting a spotlight on the need for account verification. Impostor accounts could cause serious reputational harm to high-profile figures, brands, governments, and the like. There had to be some system in place to verify the validity and authenticity of accounts — people — that mattered.
The blue check was once a symbol of social-media aristocracy. Its intent was to verify that the entity or person whose feed you were looking at was…
