Does not surprise me at all.
As a very early adopter of Twitter, I have to say I thought this platform had a lot of promise at one time. Unfortunately, it's becoming a textbook case of how massive ego corrupts and destroys a product, a company, and now even a country. It started with the lockout of developers' ability to write frameworks around the APIs and is ending, naturally, with these massive political bots owning 10K+ followers, spam that always ends up on the top layer of search.
My disenchantment had been growing for a long while. Finally shut down my accounts earlier this week after they refused to offer "verification" my ecosteader account. Ten years I've been waiting it out, promoting this company for free, adding Twitter links to websites I build for customers and clients... and they do not even grant a courtesy gesture to show people that yes, the owner of these Twitter accounts is indeed associated with these websites.
Instead, like everything else on the Internet these days, it's all about popularity and ego and bribery.
Apparently, the rumor that the best way for a small company or org to get verified is to cash-bribe somebody who works there is true? If that's what you wanna do, go for it... but at least document your corrupt dollars needed and standards for bribery somewhere, so people can have some reference before they waste their time. The echo chamber and circlejerk thing has gone on for far too long.