Twitter, during its public feedback period, received more than 22,000 survey responses that shaped its new policy.
Bengaluru: Twitter will relaunch its public verification process early next year, and has made changes to the proposed policy after receiving feedback.
During its public feedback period, it received more than 22,000 survey responses that shaped its new policy. The new policy now states that the titles of the “News” category will include “News and Journalists” and the “Sports” category will include “Sports and esports” to be more inclusive. It also added reference in the “Entertainment” category to more clearly include digital content creators.
Twitter said it heard the feedback that some of the criteria for a profile to be considered “complete” feels too restrictive, and so it has updated the definition to no longer require a profile bio or header image.
It added that public feedback showed that measuring the minimum follower count requirement on a per-country basis isn’t the right approach, so it has updated this to be on a per-region basis to make the follower count requirements less susceptible to spam and more equitable across geographies.
The relaunch public applications for verification would happen in January 2021 through a new, self-serve application process that will be available on the Account Settings page on the web and in-app.
Twitter has also started to build and roll-out profile labels for political candidates, government accounts, and state-affiliated media and are working on new ways to designate different account types, starting with Automated Accounts and Memorial Accounts.
Twitter said many people suggested that categories for verification including academics, scientists and religious leaders, and it plans to explore adding dedicated categories for these to the policy sometime next year.