Tldr: there isn’t a formal public policy at the moment as it’s still being reworked from a couple different ways. A limited number (relatively speaking) of verifications still happen but you have to be sponsored by a staff member (so most often they are for advertisers or large events for example the Olympics needing a bunch of athletes verified etc). Once sponsored though they still need to meet the basic criteria (“you give us a lot of money” is not in it) which basically drills down to “are you notable enough” like looking for certain levels of Alexa ranking for a company, or enough news articles about “you” (not just your product) etc. they’ve always seemed relatively fair though I certainly hope they are able to rework the public policy soon so that normal people can apply.
Tldr: there isn’t a formal public policy at the moment as it’s still being reworked from a couple different ways. A limited number (relatively speaking) of verifications still happen but you have to be sponsored by a staff member (so most often they are for advertisers or large events for example the Olympics needing a bunch of athletes verified etc). Once sponsored though they still need to meet the basic criteria (“you give us a lot of money” is not in it) which basically drills down to “are you notable enough” like looking for certain levels of Alexa ranking for a company, or enough news articles about “you” (not just your product) etc. they’ve always seemed relatively fair though I certainly hope they are able to rework the public policy soon so that normal people can apply.
That's not a tl;dr
Why would normal people need to be verified though?