Twitter Removes Verified Blue Checks Reportedly Purchased by Taliban Leaders

New York: Twitter has removed account verification for Taliban leaders who were using a paid-for verification feature to get the verified blue tick. The news came to the fore after the verification mark was removed from the Twitter accounts of Hedayatullah Hedayat and Abdul Haq Hammad, two senior Taliban figures who had blue ticks earlier.

Hedayatullah Hedayat is the head of the Taliban’s department for “access to information,” and Abdul Haq Hammad, is head of the media watchdog at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture.

The presence of hard-line Islamists on Twitter has been a topic of controversy for some time. In October 2021, former US President Donald Trump, who was suspended from the platform after his supporters ransacked the US Capitol, said “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favourite American President has been silenced.

Reportedly it is suspected that Twitter has removed the blue tick as Taliban leaders have been communicating with the rest of the world and disseminating their decisions for a very long time using Twitter.