Twitter Tests Phone Number-Verification Label, View Count

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It feels like it has been forever since Twitter introduced its verified account check mark. While these are usually only for high profile users of “public interest”, it looks like the microblogging site is testing another verification mark. And this one only requires that you verify your account with your phone number.

Frequent app reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong shared on Twitter her discovery of this label. While it’s not as fancy as a tick by your account name, it still comes with a “verified phone number” label above your following and follower count.

It’s unclear for now what is the purpose of this secondary verification badge. On one hand, this can be taken as another means to verify an account as not being run by a bot. While the process is much easier than getting a Verified tick, which requires a lot more than just a phone number, it still adds a lot more to the process of churning out burner accounts. One can also speculate that accounts with verified phone numbers will be given higher visibility as well.

But on the flip side, it’s one more bit of personal information to trust Twitter with. Which is something that the company doesn’t have a spotless track record for. After all, there was the incident with verified accounts tweeting out Bitcoin scams. Then there was the time before that when the platform allegedly accidentally used phone numbers and emails for ad targeting.

Speaking of visibility, Wong found another feature that Twitter looks to be testing. And that is a view count for tweets. Though it is unclear if this is something that will be publicly visible or only something the tweet author can see. Also unclear is the purpose this view count is supposed to serve.

(Source: Jane Manchun Wong / Twitter [1], [2] via The Verge)

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