tx8653

That's not what it means, and I don't think any large number of people actually think that's what it means. It means the account is verified to be owned by X,

I beg to differ. Twitter accounts of individuals come across as a personal medium, not a mass propaganda outfit. I would be extremely surprised if a majority of users realized that an individual account with a blue checkmark was actually being run by a team.

As for sharing passwords: Twitter has to have mechanisms for detecting multiple logins to the same account.

People on Twitter don’t expect spokespeople, they expect the actual person whose name is on the account. If they can’t be bothered to Tweet 280 characters on an issue personally, maybe they shouldn’t be Tweeting about it at all, or leave it to the “office of” or “campaign of” accounts.

This shows that the Twitter verified accounts system/blue checkmarks are pretty worthless. Gravel may have handed his password over to the kids, but other “individual” accounts are run by multiple admins using Twitter’s built-in features, and some politicians have the disclaimer “tweets by me have my initials”.

Twitter should restrict verified individual accounts to a single user (the actual person who owns the account) and remove the check mark from people who violate those rules. There are also individual accounts that seem to be selling access to their followers by giving admin rights to others.

Accounts that have multiple admins should have this explicitly called out in the profile/name (“Office of XYZ”) , and which admin posted the Tweet needs to be made explicit.