They opened it to everyone for a while and then were doing such a bad job of it that they closed it up again to stop the complaints and suggested in public that

They opened it to everyone for a while and then were doing such a bad job of it that they closed it up again to stop the complaints and suggested in public that they were discontinuing verification. (Of course, that wasn't true) You can see here https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twitter-verified-accounts https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit... that they used to accept requests but it is now "on hold"