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Right but despite it being added for that reason, it became a tool that allowed twitter to privilege certain people while claiming that they were largely impartial.
They attached benefits to verified users that gave those users a substantive advantage in the twitter agora over other users. Then they preferentially gave verification to users with the preferred left leaning (or at least non-challenging) politics, thereby amplifying the voices of cultural figures on the left over everyone else.
They used verification to launder this advantage and cover the political preference it represented. They could defend giving advantages on their platform to some people and not others by saying "well that person needs verification and that other person doesn't" or just "we're not sure if that person needs verification, but it's in the pipeline to be considered". The requirement for verifications were opaque and allowed them to pick and choose at will who got these advantages and refuse to give any explanation for who got them.
If the purpose of verification was just to prevent impersonation then the rules could have been made explicit. However that would mean that a lot of people who are outside the overton window - but not so outside the window as to be deemed bannable - would get verification, which twitter didn't want.
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