I'm not sure that's really fair. But, yes, there are people who are fairly well known in their little corner of the Internet and take it as a personal affront if Twitter won't give them a blue check. (From what I can tell, the checks are mostly for politicians, major journalists, and mainstream celebrities.)
I still don't understand why Tinder and Bumble and other dating sites will let any user verify their humanity and yet Twitter won't. I think it would get rid of so much of its spam problem if it just let anyone verify their account, and didn't play these popularity games with blue checks.
I don't really understand it either. I've even had my account spoofed by another account (which Twitter killed after I reported it). And I do a fair bit of writing for publications but Twitter still wouldn't verify me.
So I learned the history of the blue check came from Tony LaRussa's account being spoofed and he sued them and then they created the verified blue check concept. I think it may be one of the strongest legal arguments for them to do it. And also an easy way for them to combat bots without having to admit all the fake accounts on their platform.
Certainly spoofing and other forms of impersonation are the reason.
But saying that only relatively famous people deserve proactive protection doesn't strike me as a great look. Yes, well-known people are more likely to be targeted and the effects are likely to be greater but I'm not sure that's a justification for withholding verification from everyone else.
The effects are also more likely to be noticeable if impersonating someone famous, whereas easier to skate by if the person is not famous so I agree that they should enable it for all.
I don't get it either why they're holding back. I'm at some point where I want someone to make a twitter like platform with mostly if not exclusively verified people, I hope twitter does it but I doubt it, so I hope someone else will. I can get really tired of interacting with people wearing masks or people wearing masks of other people's faces.
