Source: Global Village Space
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has announced that the social media platform will only show verified accounts on its algorithmic “For You” timeline starting from April 15th. The move is aimed at tackling advanced AI bot swarms that have taken over the platform.
Musk clarified that verified bots that do not impersonate humans are eligible to be shown on the timeline. This means that only paid users, brands, or government officials will be recommended by Twitter’s algorithm.
Twitter has been promoting its “For You” timeline for some time now, despite negative opinions from many users. However, the decision to make it a verified-only algorithmic feed is unlikely to be popular. Analysts suggest that Twitter has only 385,000 paying users at present, and the company is removing legacy verification checkmarks of previously notable accounts on April 1st. This means that the algorithmic feed will be filled by paid accounts, brands, and officials’ accounts, making it a very skewed timeline.
Musk also stated that going forward, only verified accounts will be able to take part in polls. However, it is unclear whether this applies to polls created by Twitter or all polls on the platform. As always, the announcement is confusing.
Last year, Twitter briefly instated a policy to ban handles and links to other social networks like Facebook and Instagram. The move backfired, and after heavy criticism, the company reversed the rule.
At that time, Musk said that every major policy decision would go through a poll. However, this has not been implemented yet. Soon after, he launched a poll asking people if he should step down as CEO. By the end of it, 57.5% voted in favor.
Several people suggested that bots accounted for many of these votes. At that time, Musk took note of a user suggestion to limit policy voting to only paying subscribers. With the latest statement, he might be finally implementing this change.
This development comes days after GitHub took down Twitter’s leaked source code. Musk has promised to open-source the social network’s recommendation algorithm on March 31st. It remains to be seen if the code has references to limiting it to only verified users.
Source: Global Village Space
