Verification
Verification
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On our forum site, you may have seen people with a checkmark next to their name, as well as a "Verified" badge. The verified badge lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic. To receive a verified badge, an account must be authentic, notable, and active.
To encourage and maintain trust between users on the platform, you will need to confirm your identity with our Forum Staff in order to be Verified. Depending on the category, you will be asked to choose one of the following three methods of verifying your identity:
Official website: Provide the link to an official website that references you (or your business) and your Forum account. You may need to provide additional evidence confirming your affiliation/ownership of the site.
ID verification: Provide a photo of a valid official government-issued identification document, such as your Driver’s License or Passport. This requirement applies to individuals, not companies, brands, or organizations.*
Official email address: Provide an official email address with a domain relevant to the notability category you choose. You may need to provide additional evidence confirming your affiliation/ownership of the site.
Your account must represent or otherwise be associated with a prominently recognized individual or brand, in line with the notability criteria described below. In addition to confirming the identity of the controller of the account, our Forum Staff will Verify the following types of accounts based on the criteria described. In all categories, we may independently confirm qualifying affiliation through business partnerships or direct outreach. For each category we may request the following type of information to confirm notability:
News Coverage: Provide news articles that are about or reference yourself or your organization multiple times in the article. These articles must be from Verified news organizations (like WFSB and CNN) and cannot be a blog or self-published content. Some categories may require you to submit articles that reference or link to your or your organization’s Forum account in addition to referring to you or your organization.
Google Trends: Provide a link to a profile on Google Trends that depicts search history and is linked to the category in which you are applying.
Wikipedia: Provide a link to a stable Wikipedia article about you or your business/organization that meets the encyclopedia’s notability standards.
Other industry specific references: Depending on the category, we may ask for more industry specific references such as a link to an IMDB page for entertainment. We will also ask for evidence of your ownership of certain channels.
Follower or Mention Count: If your account is detected to be in the top 5% follower or mention count for your geographic location, it may count towards notability evidence for certain categories.
Note: The FSS Forum uses a mix of internal signals to evaluate the authenticity of a given account's followers and engagement. We also assess a range of signals from third-party public resources that have been submitted in support of applications (such as how recently they were updated) to evaluate the quality of those resources. We do this to confirm that you have not purchased followers.
Your account must be active with a record of adherence to the Forum Terms of Service. This means:
Complete: Your account must have a profile name, and a profile image;
Active use: Your account must be public and you must have logged into that account within the last 2 weeks;
Security: Your account must have a confirmed email address and 2FA; and
Forum TOS: Your account must not have had a moderated action for violating the Forum TOS in the past 12 months (excluding successful appeals).*
*Note: We may make exceptions to the above requirements for accounts at high risk of impersonation or safety related concerns. We reserve the right to deny or revoke Verification to accounts that meet any of the above criteria through artificial or inauthentic activity.
Every quarter, or every 3 months, our @SYSTEM bot will automatically scan each profile in our forum.
If it is deemed that a profile is being followed by at least 60% of our platform, said profile will automatically be granted a verification badge.
Users are able to request verification if they believe they are notable enough. If you believe you meet all the criteria mentioned above, you may apply below.