Twitter Pauses Account Verification After Daily Beast Report That White Nationalist Got a Blue Check

Twitter announced Thursday that it will pause its verification process after The Daily Beast reported that the social-media platform had verified the account of a white supremacist earlier this week. “Verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance,” Twitter said in a statement. “We recognize that we have created this confusion and need to resolve it. We have paused all general verifications while we work and will report back soon.” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also tweeted that the company “should’ve communicated faster on this” and that they “realized some time ago the system is broken and needs to be reconsidered. And we failed by not doing anything about it. Working now to fix faster.” On Tuesday the company verified the account of Jason Kessler, who was one of the creators behind the white-supremacist Charlottesville rally in August, where one person was killed.