Twitter will recommend less of free accounts and deprive them of polling rights

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, which makes recommendations and polling privileges paid features.

Twitters For You feed is a feed consisting of tweets from users the user follows and recommended tweets from other users. From 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 could previously verify their accounts for free, but since Musk’s takeover of the platform, this is no longer possible. Accounts that were verified before the takeover and thus had a blue checkmark will lose that checkmark from April 1. Since last year, that blue check mark can only be obtained via a Blue subscription, which costs 8.47 euros per month including VAT.

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. Replies from Blue subscribers have also been prioritized over tweets from non-paying users since December last year. Elon Musk wants to increase the number of paying users in order to earn more money from the platform.

Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations.

The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.

Voting in polls will require verification for the same reason.

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023