The Twitter feed will only promote tweets from users who pay for its £8 monthly subscription service, Elon Musk, the site’s owner and CEO, tweeted.
Starting April 15, the site’s “For You” tab, which tries to algorithmically curate popular posts for users, will include only “verified accounts,” Musk tweeted, describing the decision as “the only realistic way to address the swarms of advanced AI bots”. taking over.”
Voting in polls on the site will also require verification “for the same reason,” Musk added.
Starting April 15, only verified accounts will be eligible to be on For You recommendations.
It’s the only realistic way to approach controlling swarms of advanced AI bots. Otherwise, it’s a hopeless losing battle.
Voting in polls will require verification for the same reason.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023
Starting April 1, existing users with verification badges on the site, now known as “verified legacy,” will lose them unless they pay the monthly fee. A “verified account” will need to pay the £8 fee and provide a working phone number.
In 2022, Musk proposed requiring users to pay a fee to vote in polls, after a public proposal for him to step down as chief executive of the site came to an unexpected close with a large majority in favor of his resignation. Although he had initially promised that the vote would be binding, in the hours afterward he began to flirt with the idea that a large number of “bot” accounts had skewed the vote.
In addition to the £8 monthly service for Twitter Blue, organizations have been offered a distinctive form of verification, giving a yellow tick, priced at $1,000 per month. That allows them to give their employees more verification, for another $10 a month, while linking them to the company.
However, it’s not all bad for the former Twitter elite. According a report from the Platformer newsletterTwitter still offers a special service to a handpicked list of 35 VIPs, including Musk himself, who are artificially promoted on the platform’s algorithmic feeds.
The list includes an odd selection of powerful users from across American society, including politicians Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Biden, journalists Ben Shapiro, Matthew Yglesias and Glenn Greenwald, and the Dril cartel, who once tweeted (in all caps) : “If the zoo bans me for yelling at animals: I will face God and walk backwards to hell.”
But the list was not created to boost accounts, according to the report. Instead, it was put in place to help reassure Musk that the algorithmic changes weren’t affecting his own range. A cross-section of the platform’s largest accounts helped demonstrate which changes to the ranking system were significant, and in the process increased their engagement.
