On Tuesday, a high-level Twitter executive testifying before British lawmakers admitted the social media platform’s verification process was “broken.” Speaking before the House of Commons’ committee reviewing online abuse, Sinead McSweeney, the vice president for public policy and communications in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said the entire system for adorning accounts with the coveted blue checkmark was “broken from top to bottom.” The committee was especially interested in the accounts of Britain First’s Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, both of which were suspended on Monday.
“People had been verified who never should have been verified,” McSweeney told the committee. “The entire system of verification is now suspended and it’s being fully reviewed.” Fransen, one of the two Britain First accounts Twitter suspended, gained international notoriety when U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted several anti-Muslim (and fake) videos she’d published. Despite outcry from both sides of the Atlantic, however, the company initially refused to take the videos down. (Trump didn’t remove the videos from his Twitter page either, while Press Secretary Sarah Sanders went so far as to defend them.)
Although Twitter’s verification process was suspended in early November after the Nazi organizer of the violent Charlottesville rally was verified, Monday’s wave of account suspensions is just the first step. McSweeney promised British lawmakers that more waves of suspensions and system improvements were forthcoming, but added, “You can clean a street every morning, you can’t guarantee it’s still going to be clean at 10 a.m.”
(Via Mirror Online)