Twitter confirmed it will allow all of its users to apply for "verified account" status on the same day that it permanently booted an outspoken conservative from its site amid claims of abusive tweets.

Up to now, the coveted blue tick badge was the preserve of celebrities, journalists, and high-profile users—some of whom run the risk of parody or fake accounts in their name.

However, while the online form to request verification on Twitter is now available to anyone, the micro-blogging site said that only accounts “determined to be of public interest” will receive the badge of honour.

Twitter’s user services vice president Tina Bhatnagar said in a blog post:

We’ll ask you to tell us why we should verify an account. If the account represents a person, we want to understand their impact in their field. If it represents a corporation or company, let us know their mission. When providing URLs to support your request, choose sites that help express the account holder’s newsworthiness or relevancy in their field. We want to make it even easier for people to find creators and influencers on Twitter so it makes sense for us to let people apply for verification. Our goal with this update is to help more people find great, high-quality accounts to follow, and for creators and influencers—no matter where they are in the world—to easily connect with a broader audience.

To apply, users must set their tweets to “public” and fill in a form with a verified phone number, e-mail address, website, and birthday. Twitter may also ask for a scan of government-issued ID (such as a passport or driver’s licence). The company recommends that “the profile and/or header photo reflects the person, the corporation’s branding, or the company’s branding.”

Twitter introduced the verified account scheme in 2009, and 187,000 of the 320 million monthly users are currently verified.

Some users have already been putting the verification requests to the test, before complaining when applications for the blue tick badge are rejected.

Theo Priestly—who describes himself as a "technology and marketing evangelist"—tweeted that he had failed to get verified. “Unfortunately the account is not eligible to be verified at this time, but it may become eligible if you make some adjustments to the account’s profile and/or settings,” Twitter told him, before suggesting that he make some adjustments and try again in 30 days.

He expressed frustration with the system, however, griping that there was no advice on what adjustments were required to achieve the Twitter "verified" status.

At time of publication, Twitter had failed to respond to Ars’ questions about the verification process.

The tick of it

Twitter's blue tick is used by some to weed out tweets from trolls and abusive accounts. However, it's not always a successful tactic as Twitter’s decision to ban Breibart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos shows.

Up until January, Yiannopoulos’ account @nero was verified. Twitter stripped him of his blue tick status following consistent trolling. On Tuesday, it altogether barred him after Ghostbusters' actor Leslie Jones complained of harassment on the site.

I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart.All this cause I did a movie.You can hate the movie but the shit I got today...wrong — Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016

Twitter didn't mention Yiannopoulos by name, preferring instead to say that it would crack down on “the targeted abuse or harassment of others.” It said:

People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts. We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behaviour on Twitter. We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders. We have been in the process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behaviour and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted. We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.

Critics hit back at Twitter, however, using #FreeMilo to claim that free speech was being crushed on the site.