Twitter on Saturday sprang into action as it hastily restored the blue verified badge on Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu's personal Twitter handle after it was removed following a long period of inactivity.
The social media platform was trending on Saturday morning after it emerged that it removed the verified blue tick from the personal account of Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu. Officials of the Vice President Secretariat said the personal Twitter handle of Naidu @MVenkaiahNaidu was inactive for a long time and the Twitter algorithm removed the blue badge.
“The account has been inactive since July 2020. As per our verification policy, Twitter may remove blue verified badge and verified status if the account becomes inactive. The badge has been restored,” ANI quoted a Twitter spokesperson as saying. The blue tick or "verified" mark signifies that an account is "authentic, notable and active", Twitter explains.
The officials said Twitter was in the process of restoring the verification badge. The last tweet posted from the personal handle was on July 23 last year. The vice president uses the official Twitter handle to send out tweets.
The removal of the blue ticks came amid a standoff between Twitter and the Indian government over a host of issues, including freedom of expression and the new IT rules.
Last month, Twitter's move to mark as "manipulated media" the posts of BJP leaders on an alleged Congress toolkit drew a sharp response from the government, which sternly asked the site to undo the label, calling it "an overreach and prejudicial".
