It looks like in addition to giving Twitter Blue subscribers more benefits and features, the social media platform is also taking some away from non-payers. As owner Elon Musk announced on the platform, starting 15 April, only “verified” accounts (read: paying users) will be featured in the “For You” recommendations tab. Voting in Twitter polls will also be a privilege that is limited to paying subscribers.
Musk claims that this “is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over”. Which is a weird justification to say the least. Making things a worse case of mixed messaging, the announcement tweet is followed up by another that reads “That said, it’s OK to have verified bot accounts if they follow terms of service and don’t impersonate a human”.
That said, it’s ok to have verified bot accounts if they follow terms of service & don’t impersonate a human
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2023
This is quite the turn of events, especially considering the announcement from last week when Twitter said that legacy check marks will be discontinued on 1 April. Muddling the waters even further is the possibility of giving paying subscribers the ability to hide their blue check marks. Beyond the mixed messaging, the one consistent theme that one can gleam from all these announcements, whether they will actually happen or otherwise, is an aggressive push for monetisation.
And that aggressive push may backfire with the lack of regional pricing for Twitter Blue. The subscription service has just recently gone global, but when it was made available on our shores – at least on web and iOS – the prices are just slightly about a direct conversion from US prices with rounded numbers. Which are pretty hefty to say the least, and it seems unlikely that people would pay the same amount of money per month as a Netflix subscription, just to be able to compose longer tweets, edit them, and upload longer 1080p videos.
(Source: Elon Musk / Twitter)
