[Thread] 1/ This one's about how many Twitter accounts have been verified since they suspended their public verification in February 2018. Many of you know my thoughts on verification, I believe a robust verification system will really curb platform manipulation.
2/ I can determine that at least 8,124 accounts were verified since between 27 February 2018 and October 1st 2019. I say "at least" because I am only able to analyse those accounts that were both verified and created after February 27th 2018. I don't have a 'verified since'
3/ field in my metadata. Below you can see that the amount of verified accounts appears to have been declining leading up to September 2019. This indicates perhaps a general phasing out even of private, behind the scenes, verification 
4/ I didn't clean the location data. So uncleaned you can see broadly those countries which have had the most verified accounts. For those in the Arab World, quite a few Saudi gov accounts have been verified. Seemingly more .gov accounts than any other country.
5/ On a final note, and to re-emphasize, the actual number of accounts verified since Twitter suspended their public verification in Feb 2018 will be much higher than this, as these are only accounts created since Feb 2018. Still a minimum of approx 8,000 is still quite a lot.
