Elon Musk has announced plans to make Twitter into an even more insufferable platform for users who refuse to pay for it—this time, by limiting who can have their voices heard.
Musk has announced that the following changes will be enacted on April 15:
- Only people who are subscribed to Twitter Blue will be eligible to appear as recommended tweets in users’ For You feeds.
- Only people who are subscribed to Twitter Blue will be able to vote in polls.
It’s Musk’s platform, so he’s free to run it how he likes, but it’s hard to see how these pay-to-play changes aren’t going to annoy the majority of Twitter users and represent just another reason why they may want to jump ship to alternative social media platforms.
Many suers have already been annoyed with the For You feed under Musk, with some complaining that the recommended tweets shown in For You are not relevant to their interests. Well after April 15, it sure sounds as if all recommended tweets in that feed will be from Twitter Blue subscribers, since users who were verified under the old system are expected to lose their checkmarks beginning April 1.
Meanwhile, the new poll changes will likely make any Twitter polls almost meaningless, as only a small subset of users will now be able to vote. Commercial and small businesses especially should be concerned about the poll changes. Many small businesses run polls on Twitter to get feedback from customers, but now that only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to vote in polls, their results are essentially useless for businesses as the majority of their customers will not be able to vote to make their voices heard.
The changes certainly seem a like an attempt by Musk to boost Twitter Blue subscriptions. However, the reason Musk gave for the changes is that they are “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over” the platform.
Yet some Twitter users pointed out that the poll changes, specifically, could benefit Musk for other reasons than increasing Blue subscriptions.
And of course, many on Twitter have voiced their opposition to the upcoming changes, pointing out that they are likely to drive users away and harm the Twitter user experience.
These latest changes come just days before Twitter will begin stripping legacy blue checkmarks from users who were previously deemed notable.
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