Elon Musk makes a drastic change to Twitter’s ‘For You’ Tab that will change the look of your page from now.
Last week, Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, announced that as of April 15th, only those that pay for the Twitter Blue subscription will be recommended in the ‘For You’ tab on Twitter’s main page. You will still be able to see unverified Twitter users in your ‘Following’ tab on the main page, but only paying users will get the top spot. Musk claims there are a couple reasons why he’s doing this.
Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations.
The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.
Voting in polls will require verification for same reason.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023
According to Social Media Today, as of last week only 450k subscribers, or 0.18% of Twitter’s user base, were paying the Twitter Blue subscription. “The risk for Twitter is that this small group of users is also largely aligned with Musk, and his political and ideological stances, which could turn your For You feed into a very one-sided discussion, in relation to political and world events” (Social Media Today).
For a regular user, Twitter Blue subscriptions ring in at £6.40, or $8, a month for a total of £77, or $96 a year, which is quite a drastic change after the platform has been free all these years.
The idea behind paying this subscription every month is to remove the number of bots on the platform. According to Social Media Today, these scammers and spammers are currently able to create thousands of accounts for free and “then use those profiles to make certain opinions or angles trend, amplifying whatever side of an argument they choose to take.” With the subscription, they will not be able to set up as many accounts, or at least not have their ideas as widely seen across Twitter with the new ‘For You’ tab update.
For businesses and organisations, they will be cashing a monthly check of £800 to Twitter from now on if they want to keep their blue check mark. Some companies however are not too pleased about that, and have not held back in expressing their concerns to Musk.
The New York Times lost their checkmark on Twitter last Saturday after refusing to pay the £800 a month for the subscription. Musk was quick to share his thoughts on the New York Times not wanting to pay the subscription, and turned to Twitter immediately, calling them “incredibly hypocritical” because they are “super aggressive” in making sure that people pay their subscriptions to the New York Times.
The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable.
They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles.
Same applies to all publications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
The blue checkmark next to someone’s name on Twitter once signified that you were a ‘verified’ user on Twitter – meaning you proved it was you by showing the platform proof of identification. Since Musk took over last year, this was abolished and it means nothing more than the fact you are paying a subscription to the platform. It is unclear if the New York Times will cave and purchase a Twitter Blue subscription, but as of Wednesday, they still do not have one.
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