Automatic rejection on verification application on Facebook

Hey everyone. Has anyone here managed to get your personal profile verified on Facebook?

I have been featured in several larger publications and just tried verifying my account as I have recently had someone else try to impersonate me online and would like to avoid that happening again.

I filled out the “get verified” application and made a strong case for why I thought I should be verified, while also providing links to articles in which I have been featured at large established publications.

I got a notification that my application had been rejected because I did not meet the criteria for verification. However the issue is that this literally arrived 5-10 seconds after I clicked on the submit button, so there is no way someone actually even looked at my application. It seems that it was rejected automatically.

It would have been one thing if I had gotten rejected after a manual review but in my case it never made it to human eyes and I’d like to figure out why.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why that may be? Would really appreciate any input on this!