Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has made an announcement on upcoming changes to the paid Twitter Blue feature of the social media network.
On April 15th, only verified subscribers will have posts suggested to other users and will be allowed to vote in polls. This change will take effect immediately.
According to the guidelines, tweets posted from accounts that do not pay for the service will not be featured in the “For you” stream of content that is recommended.
The company announced a week ago that it would take away the verified status of some “legacy” accounts. These accounts trace back to a time before Mr Musk bought the company.
Customers presently pay $7 (£5.70) per month for blue-tick verification, which grants access to extra features as well as access to the verification itself.
Mr Musk stated that the adjustments were “the only practical solution to the problem of advanced artificial intelligence bot swarms taking over. Under any other scenario, this fight is destined to end in defeat.”
He continued by saying, “Voting in polls will require verification for the same reason.”
Mr Musk stated in a previous article that the use of paid verification would dramatically increase the cost of utilizing bots and would make it simpler to recognize them.
On the other hand, the action has drawn criticism from a number of users on social media.
“Our number one priority for my team was to safeguard users from real world danger and this screams the total opposite to me,” said a former worker on Twitter’s verification team who asked to remain anonymous and spoke to the BBC.
“Verified users will utilize the power and presence they have on the network to influence other users in any way, from spreading false information to actually causing harm to other users in other parts of the world. It’s a threat that no one is hearing or seeing, yet it’s still there “they continued on.
People began imitating well-known brands and celebrities shortly after Twitter Blue was released in November, and some of them even paid for the “blue tick” badge in an effort to give the impression that they were genuine. This led to an initially chaotic launch. A great number of people posed as Mr Musk himself.
Because of this, Twitter was forced to halt the service after less than a week, and it wasn’t until the following month that it was reinstated.
Since then, Twitter Blue has been utilized by contentious organizations, such as officials associated with the Taliban and prominent supporters of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Tweets from verified users appear more prominently than those from other accounts. Also, subscribers have access to additional tools and benefits, such as a button to update content, among other advantages.
In the past, the blue tick served as a sign that high-profile accounts might be trusted as genuine. Twitter did not charge users for access to this feature; nonetheless, the social media platform retained exclusive discretion over which users were granted access.
Twitter announced a week ago that beginning on April 1, it would begin the process of winding down its “old verified programme” and removing some “legacy verified checkmarks.”
According to the company, customers were required to make a payment in order to “maintain your blue checkmark on Twitter.”
The ability of social media sites to develop their advertising revenue or paid memberships can be hampered by bots on those networks.
Mr Musk has frequently voiced his concern over a large number of spam and phony accounts that exist on Twitter. At one point, he paused his attempt to purchase the social media network for $44 billion as he questioned the amount of bots that had been acknowledged by the company’s previous management team.
