Only verified accounts will appear in the user’s For You feed starting in April and only verified accounts will be allowed to vote in polls. A verified Twitter account requires a Blue subscription, with which the recommendations and polling rights become paid features.
Twitters For You feed is a feed consisting of tweets from users the user follows and recommended tweets from others users. Starting April 15, Twitter will only recommend verified accounts here, says Elon Musk on the platform. The CEO says this is the “only realistic way to prevent advanced AI bot swarms from taking over the platform.” For that reason, only verified accounts are allowed to vote in polls.
Users used to be able to verify their accounts for free, but since Musk took over the platform, this is no longer possible. Accounts that were verified before the takeover and thus had a blue check mark, lose that checkmark starting April 1. Since last year, that blue tick is available only through a Blue subscription, which including VAT costs 8.47 euros per month.
It’s not the first time that free Twitter accounts have lost features that suddenly require a subscription; since last week only Blue subscribers can use text messages as a two-step verification method. Since December last year, the answers of Blue subscribers also receive override tweets from non-paying users. Elon Musk wants to increase the number of paying users in order to earn more money from the platform.
