Twitter found a novel way to make Minnesota angry on Thursday.
It said Alan Page isn’t notable enough for its fabled blue check mark.
That would be Alan Page, the Minnesota Vikings legend. Alan Page, the Pro and College Football Hall of Famer. Alan Page, the Minnesota Supreme Court justice. Alan Page, the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Alan Page, the namesake of the NFLPA’s community service award.
All of that sounds like a fairly notable person — it goes without saying that Page is the only NFL Hall of Famer to ever serve on a state supreme court — but the 76-year-old says he still got this message when he applied for verification on Twitter:
Twitter’s message:
“This account will not be verified at this time because the evidence provided did not meet our criteria for notability. As a result, we could not reliably verify that the account associated with the request is a notable person, organization, or brand.”
If Page isn’t notable enough for a blue check mark, you have to wonder who on Twitter is.
Let’s be real here, though. The odds of a real-life, actual human looking at Page’s resume and sending him that paragraph are infinitesimal. It is much, much more likely we are looking at the work of some kind of algorithm that for whatever reason, some kind of glitch or computational blind spot, ruled against Page.
Odds are we see verification bestowed on Page before long. It’s still incredible that Page, of all people, got that message.
