Musk: Twitter's 'For You' Timeline to Only Show Verified Accounts

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Facts

  • After announcing that Twitter users will only see tweets from paid subscribers in their default "For You" feed starting April 15, CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday clarified that the feed would continue to show accounts a user follows directly, even if they are not verified.1
  • On Monday, Musk said banning non-verified accounts from the For You recommendations was "the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over," adding that only verified users can vote in polls.2
  • Musk has been aggressively trying to boost the platform's revenue by pushing more users to sign up for Twitter Blue as Twitter is now valued at $20B, more than 50% lower than the $44B he paid to buy it in October.3
  • Monthly revenue from Twitter's top 1K advertisers — including Coca-Cola, Unilever, Jeep, and Merck — plummeted from around $127M to just over $48M from October through January 25.4
  • In his quest to generate new revenue streams, Musk asked individual users — including celebrities and journalists — to pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue as Twitter starts winding down its free legacy verified program.5
  • For companies, non-profits, and government institutions, Twitter Blue costs $1K monthly for the primary account and an additional $50 for each affiliate account.6

Sources: 1Gizmodo, 2Axios, 3Ars Technica, 4CNN (a), 5CNBC, and 6CNN (b).

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Spiked. Elon Musk is right to make the blue verification check mark more widely accessible. The old verification system epitomizes everything wrong with Silicon Valley, bloated in its wokeness and double standards. Who decides which "notable" elites should be publicly bestowed with the blue check of social acceptance? At least under the new system, there is transparency: accounts with blue ticks belong to real people who, yes, paid for the service.
  • Narrative B, as provided by The Big Issue. Elon Musk took over Twitter with a promise of upholding freedom of speech, and instead, he's selling out, trying to squeeze a profit from a struggling platform. He has just introduced a significant bias in the voices that will be heard and the opinions that will be shared. Now, "freedom of speech" on Twitter comes with an $11-a-month price tag.

Predictions