https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/16631774/twitter-verification-kessler-milo-abuse

The controversy around Twitter’s latest public relations crisis hangs on a single, perhaps unanswerable question: what does it mean to be verified? The little blue badge originated in response to worries that celebrities on the platform were being impersonated. In time, though, it came to mean more. So when Twitter granted the badge this week to a white supremacist, it was little wonder that outrage followed.

The story of the Twitter verification controversy is the story of many Twitter controversies before it. A series of deferred decisions all but guaranteed the issue would eventually blow up in the company’s face, and when that moment finally arrived, Twitter could do little but apologize and promise to work on a solution.