I don't see anything immediately wrong with verification. There are cases where people reach out to companies for support, and having them be verified helps. Tech enthusiasts like us might be less susceptible to phishing/scams, but regular folks aren't.

However, after everything Reddit has done recently, there's no stopping them from turning this into a status symbol thing like "the website formerly known as Twitter". They could tweak their algorithm to boost comments of "verified" accounts, degrading the quality of conversation there.