Twitter’s ‘For You’ feed won’t recommend unverified accounts

SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter’s “For You” feed, the default view for users of the social network, will no longer recommend content from accounts that are not verified, owner Elon Musk tweeted on Monday.

The change, effective April 15, will mean only verified accounts – those paying an US$8 (S$11) monthly fee or associated with a verified organisation – are eligible to have their tweets suggested in the timeline that appears when most users open the app.

Voting in Twitter polls will also require verification, Mr Musk added.

Twitter’s “For You” page is a non-chronological feed intended to surface more popular and engaging content, though new measures Mr Musk is enacting are increasingly making the platform more of a two-tier system, with unpaid users left out of many formerly free features.

Doing so, Mr Musk explained, is “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over”, though he did not offer evidence of such groups operating on the platform.

Part of the sales pitch for

Twitter’s subscription product, Twitter Blue,

explicitly states the US$8 fee will help accounts “rocket to the top of replies, mentions and search”.

The latest move amplifies that prioritisation. The web and app versions of the social network still offer a “Following” tab, where users can see a time-ordered view mostly composed of the accounts they already follow.

Starting April 1, Twitter will start

removing legacy verification marks,

stripping away the blue check marks from any users not paying the fee and unaffiliated with large organisations.

The move may impact independent journalists and other peripheral voices most heavily, running counter to Mr Musk’s professed goal of trying to ensure free speech on Twitter.

The San Francisco-based company also has a further level of differentiation with a celebrity VIP list, Platformer reported on Monday. Well-known figures such as NBA star LeBron James, United States President Joe Biden and Mr Musk himself have their visibility boosted further on the platform, according to the report.

This would contradict Mr Musk’s position, articulated in recent days, that “there shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities”. Bloomberg