Microblogging site Twitter has halted its account verification programme, saying that it needs to work on the application and review process that lets people into the blue check mark club.

As per ANI, the change, where Twitter will not be letting new people apply for verification, is coming after platform admitted that several fake accounts, which reportedly seem to be part of a botnet, were incorrectly verified. If the user recently is applied for the verification there is a chance that they’ll get it.

Twitter verified has said that it’ll still be reviewing existing applications, so the freeze is just preventing new people from being able to apply.

In other words, if the user were able to apply before, Twitter’s lead say that still can do it. Twitter hasn’t indicated that it’ll be changes to the criteria that it uses to deem accounts as verifiable or not.

A Twitter spokesperson said, that it would resume “rolling out applications in the next few weeks”. This isn’t the first time Twitter has paused its verification programme. It put the public process on hold in 2017, after it recieved backlash for verifying one of the organisers behind the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville.

It brought back a revamped version in 2021 and paused it a week later due to an avalanche of requests.

The start-stop issues Twitter has been having with its Verified programme speak to the difficulties that can come with issuing a badge that it can be rewarded by users as an endorsement.

Twitter said that the purpose of badge is to show that an account is “authentic notable, and active, but even those criteria can end up courting controversy when people who are arguably notable get their applications rejected (especially when obviosuly fake accounts make it through).