> Buying verified twitter accounts is also a non-scalable solution. Sure in the short run you could probably get quite a few, but in the long run there are only

> Buying verified twitter accounts is also a non-scalable solution. Sure in the short run you could probably get quite a few, but in the long run there are only so many people. I don't think that's a problem if your goal is disinformation or manipulation: the report this network details consisted of only 14 accounts. > There's also a built-in compensating factor: To the extent that twitter accounts are worthless, it's easy to buy them. To the extent that twitter accounts are an important part of your identity online, people will tend to protect them. Try getting people to sell you their social security numbers. > Right now they're closer to the "worthless" end of that spectrum. But maybe verification would change that? I guess I'm disputing the presumption that Twitter accounts will ever be that valuable across all the members of society that the risk of loosing access to Twitter will be enough of a deterrent to any particular rando out there. Twitter's appeal seems to be mainly limited to certain slices of society (e.g. politicians, political pundits, and wannabes), and there are probably far more people outside those slices than inside them. If a rando waitress can get a verified Twitter account, and such accounts are useful for spreading disinformation, the GRU and black-hat PR agencies will probably be able to get all the accounts they'll ever need for something on the order of ~$100 a pop.