Five changes Elon Musk has made to Twitter

15:39    22 January, 2023

It will soon be the third month since Elon Musk walked into Twitter's San Francisco headquarters and later announced that he had bought the social network. After that, the company has been constantly in the media spotlight. And what changes have happened to the social network with 237 million monthly active users since the arrival of Ilon Musk?

1. The blocking of alternative ways to view messages

The latest change appears to be that Twitter has shut down access to its application programming interface (API). This is the API that other platforms use to communicate with the social network. For example, if you use a social media management program to view your account rather than a Twitter app or website, you will find that Twitter currently does not work with it.

It's unclear whether the move was intentional or not, though many experts believe it was.

"My guess is that this is because those third-party apps do not show ads and they allow the user to manage their feed as they see fit, which is at odds with Musk's plans to put more ads in front of users' eyeballs and prioritise the tweets of people who have paid for Twitter Blue," tech commentator Kate Bevan told the BBC.

Twitter has yet to make an official announcement about this, but some popular apps are already facing the problem, including Tweetbot, Fenix and Twitterific.

tweetbot.JPG (44 KB)

2. Curation

Perhaps the most obvious change has been the order in which people see tweets in their feed. The new tab offers a choice between two options: recent posts from people you subscribe to and tweets that Twitter offers.

If you use Twitter on your iPhone, you'll see two columns at the top: "For You" and "Following," and if you're using an Android device, you need to click on the asterisk, the icon in the top right corner of the screen.

The problem is that many users haven't noticed or realized that the app occasionally defaults to "For You" when Twitter selects a feed for you. There have been complaints that in this version of the feed, the user does not primarily see posts from people they like, but rather a feed with lots of Twitter recommendations and posts from people they follow or don't follow and don't recognize.

twitter curation.JPG (34 KB)

3. Recovering controversial accounts

After becoming the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk began to restore, one by one, several problematic accounts that had been blocked under the previous Twitter management for violating the social platform's rules. These include rapper Kanye West, whose account was blocked for publishing anti-Semitic posts, influencer Andrew Tate (who is currently in custody in Romania on human trafficking charges) and former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose tweets were accused of fuelling the Capitol Hill riots of January 2021.

donald trump .jpg (47 KB)

4. Blue Twitter

After several failed launches, the social networking subscription service Twitter Blue was launched in late November. For $8/11 a month, Twitter promises its users bonus features, including an edit button, improved visibility and fewer ads. Interestingly enough, quite a few people have signed up for the service, although there has been no official news of its success yet.

twitter blue.JPG (37 KB)

5. Silver and gold ticks

Twitter's blue tick, which is now a subscriber symbol, used to mean that the account was verified. It was given to celebrities, journalists and brands chosen by Twitter itself to indicate that they were not fake accounts.

Those who purchased the blue badge under the previous management still retain it, but there is a notation on the back that it is a "legacy," so to speak, and that the person in question "may or may not be notable."

Under the new leadership, the blue tick has been replaced by a gold or silver one for brands and government figures. For example, Business Insider now has a gold rating and explanatory text that says it is "Official Business," and the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's account now has a silver rating.

business insider.JPG (148 KB)

 



© NEWS.am Medicine