Here’s a new chapter of Elon Musk and his weird Twitter decisions. This time, the social network’s CEO has announced that Twitter will only show verified accounts on the “For You” algorithmic timeline starting April 15.
In a tweet, Musk justified the move by saying it was “the only realistic way to tackle the swarms of advanced AI bots taking over.” Although the Tesla CEO suggested that the move to ban unverified accounts from the proposals was to address bots, he mentioned that “verified” bots do not impersonate humans. eligible to show on the “For You” timeline. So you basically have to be a paid user, a brand or a government official to be recommended by Twitter’s algorithm.
Twitter has been trying to promote “For You” timeline for a while despite the negative comments from many users. The move to make it a verified-only algorithmic feed also won’t be a popular decision. Notably, analysts say that Twitter has only 385,000 paying users at the moment. In addition, the company is eliminating legacy verification check mark of previous notable accounts on April 1. So the algorithmic feed will be filled with paid accounts in addition to brands and official accounts making it a very misleading timeline.
Musk also said that only verified accounts can participate in the polls. But it’s not clear if that’s the poll created by Twitter (or him) or all polls on the platform. As always, the announcement is confusing.
Last year, Twitter introduced a concise policy to processing and linking to other social networks such as Facebook and Instagram. The move backfired, and after heavy criticism, the company reversed the rule. At that time, Musk speak that every major policy decision will be through a poll (Spoiler: yet). Right after that, he launched a poll asking people if he should resign as CEO. In the end, 57.5% voted in favor.
After these events, some everybody suggests that bots take up a lot of these votes. At the time, Musk noted a user suggestion to limit Voting policy for subscribers who pay only. With the latest statement, he can finally make this change.
This development comes days after GitHub removed the leaked Twitter source code. Furthermore, Musk promises to open source social network’s recommendation algorithm on March 31. We’ll have to wait and see if the code references limiting it to verified users only.
