【Watch The Silencing Online】

Twitter has confirmed it's testing a new profile badge for users who have Watch The Silencing Onlineverified their phone numbers.

App researchers Nima Owji and Jane Manchun Wong pointed out the feature in the last few weeks, discovering the Twitter label that would appear on accounts with a verified phone number. Twitter then confirmed the feature to TechCrunch on Tuesday, telling the publisher it was an effort to "allow people to add context to their accounts."

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Twitter further confirmed the badge to Mashable, saying they are currently experimenting with the opt-in feature.

"Verification is just one part of our work to help people understand who they’re interacting with on Twitter," the app said to Mashable in an email.

"When people come to Twitter we want them to quickly and easily be able to find credible and relevant content based on their interests," they continued. "Across the service we are investing in providing additional context about the types of accounts and content people may come across so they can make informed decisions about if or how they want to engage with that information". 

Verified "blue check" accounts must have either a phone number or email address linked, to help Twitter with the account verification process. The new "verified phone number" feature appears to display a grey label on the bottom half of a person's Twitter bio.

But the feature notably lands amid the app's ongoing battle with Elon Musk. The deal between the Tesla CEO and Twitter continues to be something of a saga, with the richest man in the world attempting to terminate the multi-billion-dollar acquisition. Musk has been vocal about bot fears — claiming that a large chunk of accounts on Twitter are fake or spam accounts, and alleging this had violated the deal contract.

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The verified phone number badge may be a way for Twitter to combat this, though it drudges up a whole lot of other issues, namely in the realm of privacy.

Twitter just recently dealt with an incident where someone was able to discover whether a specific email address or phone number was tied to an existing account on the app. This "vulnerability" was first reported to Twitter in January 2022 through the platform's bug bounty program, but in June, Twitter learned through a press report (most likely this one from Bleeping Computer) that someone had "potentially leveraged this" and was offering to sell information they had acquired, reportedly affecting 5.4 million accounts.

UPDATE: Aug. 24, 2022, 9:33 a.m. EDT Included comment from Twitter.