What does ‘being verified’ actually mean?

Why'd You Push That Button?

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, Arts, Technology, Design

4.4 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I have sad news today: we’re publishing the season 4 finale of Why’d You Push That Button? The good news, though, is that it’s a really great episode! Today, Kaitlyn Tiffany and I (Ashley Carman) are asking what verification on social media accounts really means. To some, it represents more than a badge of authenticity. We wonder why people want to be verified and what they’re willing to do to get the blue checkmark. I tell the story of my own journey to Instagram verification (weird flex, I know) and ask my friend Michelle what she thinks about me now that I have a checkmark. Afterward, we interview Verge senior reporter Adi Robertson about verification’s origins, and then we chat with two guests who differ on the importance of verification. We talk with a content creator named Mark, who once tried to pay someone to get his Instagram account verified, and artist Joseph Grazi about his Culture Cures project and why he’s slapping anti-influencer stickers onto New York City subway train cars and platforms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Why'd You Push That Button, a show where Ashley Carmen and Caitlin Tiffany, that's me, examine all the choices technology forces us to make.
0:16.2	Today, season four finale, we're talking about verification.
0:21.4	The choice to covet it.
0:23.6	Yeah.
0:24.1	So verification, I think, always comes in the form of a little checkmark.
0:28.6	It's like a blue sunburst thing with a white checkmark in the middle.
0:33.0	It's on all of these personality, face and content creation.
0:40.6	Yeah.
0:41.2	Creator.
0:42.2	Yeah.
0:42.8	So you can be verified on Facebook.
0:44.2	You can be verified on Twitter, Instagram.
0:47.6	Tinder.
0:48.6	Which is just odd.
0:50.3	Supposedly, it's supposed to just be, like, check, yes, this is the person that it says it is like do not fear you have not been catfish yeah slash scammed this isn't like a hoax president trump account whatever but like it has taken on other connotations which maybe have something to do with like power.
1:12.7	Yeah.
1:13.4	Status.
1:14.6	Cool factors.
1:16.3	It's strange.
1:17.1	Cloud.
1:17.8	It's super strange.
1:19.2	Yeah.
	...

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