This is a new chapter for Elon Musk and his bizarre Twitter decisions. Now, the social network’s CEO has declared that starting April 15, Twitter will only show verified accounts in its algorithm’s “For You” timeline.
In a tweet, Musk justified the move by stating that it is “the only real way to deal with the dominance of swarms of advanced AI bots.” Tesla’s CEO suggested the move to ban unverified accounts from recommendations was to deal with bots, but ‘verified’ bots that don’t impersonate humans are on the ‘For You’ timeline. I said I was eligible to be shown. So basically, you have to be a paying user, brand, or government official to be recommended by Twitter’s algorithms.
Twitter is trying to promote “For You” timeline for a while Despite negative feedback from many users.The move to make it a verified-only algorithmic feed is also not a popular decision. Only 385,000 paying users at the momentAdditionally, the company is removing Legacy Validation Checkmark for Previously Featured Accounts As such, the algorithmic feed becomes a highly skewed timeline as it fills with paid accounts in addition to brand and affiliate accounts.
Musk also said that going forward, only verified accounts will be able to participate in voting. However, it’s unclear if it’s a poll made by his Twitter (or him) or all the polls on the platform. As usual, the announcement is confusing.
Twitter introduced a policy briefly last year. Disallow handles or links to other social networks such as Facebook or InstagramThe move backfired, and after heavy criticism, the company overturned the rule.Musk then Said All major policy decisions end up going through polls (spoiler: they don’t).Soon after, he launched a poll asking people he should resign as CEOUltimately 57.5% voted yes.
After these events Several people Suggesting that bots account for many of these votes. That’s when Musk took notice of a user’s suggestion to limit it. Policy to only vote for paying subscribersWith his latest statement, he may have finally implemented this change.
The development comes days after GitHub removed Twitter’s leaked source code.Plus, Musk promised open source March 31st Social Network Recommendation AlgorithmYou should check your code for references to restricting to verified users only.
