“People had been verified who never should have been verified”: Twitter VP Sinead McSweeney

Twitter VP Sinead McSweeney on Tuesday admitted to British lawmakers that the social-media giant’s verification system is “broken from top to bottom” as it has repeatedly given the coveted blue tick symbol to far-right hate groups and their leaders.

“People had been verified who never should have been verified,” she told MPs amid questions over how several known white supremacists—including British far-right activist Jayda Fransen, whose anti-Muslim propaganda videos were retweeted by President Trump—ever received the status symbol. “The entire system of verification is now suspended and it’s being fully reviewed,” noted McSweeney, the company’s vice president of communications for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She additionally defended her company’s hate-speech filtering process, telling lawmakers, “You can clean a street every morning, you can’t guarantee it’s still going to be clean at 10 a.m.”