WQYU.COM

@TwitterBlue needs to come back but it should not be a free-for-all, there needs to be some type of vetting.

I fully support the idea of allowing more and more people to be able to get verified and not just be reserved for the selected few such as politicians, members of the media, celebrities, influencers which is very subjective but including small websites like this one, independently owned businesses, and family owned businesses.

The four days that Twitter Blue was available to basically everyone in the United States, Canada, Australia, U.K. (United Kingdom) and New Zealand it seemed like it was a free-for-all and it seemed no vetting was being done other than newly created accounts created on or after November 9, 2022 they were not eligible to sign up for Twitter Blue.

If I were to be in charge of Twitter Blue this is what I would do to ensure that people who are not problematic can still sign up while on the other hand keeping problematic people from not signing up in other words have common sense Twitter Blue vetting.

• Account must be in good standing order within the past year.
• Must have a verified email.
• Must have a verified phone number.
• Must be an active Twitter account within the past 60 days.
• Profile must be fully complete. (website optional)
• Account has not change @name and screen name within the past 60 days.
• Accounts must be 60 days or older in order to sign up for Twitter Blue.

While everything above would pretty much be automated I do think when it comes to profile names, profile descriptions if it matches a word or word combination I do think the account should be flagged for manual review where the person wanting to get Twitter Blue would have to explain in 2,000 characters or less on why they should be approved if it is not obvious or sometimes automated systems may sometimes incorrectly flag something that shouldn’t be flagged.

How would this have prevented by stopping or at least reducing the amount of spam or impersonating accounts?

While I cannot say implementing this would have totally stopped, but it certainly would have slowed down the amount of spamming and/or impersonating accounts probably dramatically. I do think if there was a grace period where accounts that are at least 60 days or older any accounts that are engaging in this would have been suspended long before they would even be able to be eligible for Twitter Blue.

The chaos a.k.a. the perfect storm

I think the first problem was lack of information, I don’t think there was any official press release about Twitter Blue, maybe there was an official press release however I personally did not see any press release nor did Twitter tweet anything about Twitter Blue, I basically heard it from other people and I honestly thought it was just basically a rumor.

The original launch date for Twitter Blue was I believe on Monday, November 7, 2022 but Twitter decided to push the launch date to Wednesday, November 9, 2022. I would imagine on this URL https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue, they originally said Monday, November 7, 2022 but when the date was changed I believe anyone who wanted to sign up for Twitter Blue to impersonate, spam or use what is known as a verified status for malicious purposes was able to sign up because according to the URL I mentioned above says “Twitter accounts created on or after November 9, 2022 will be unable to subscribe to Twitter Blue at this time.” had time to sign up before November 9, so in essence accounts created on or after November 9 doesn’t matter all.

Time to reset?

I think Twitter should cancel all of the memberships of Twitter Blue an issue full refund to basically reset prior to the launch of Twitter Blue then I think they should launch Twitter Blue again but implement what I have mentioned above to have a vetting process in place as I do think allowing more and more people to be able to get verified and not just be reserved for the selected few is fantastic.

I also think during the relaunch they should also include Android and not just iOS, as Android users were completely excluded from the first time around.