Many users are voicing their dissatisfaction with the recent Twitter changes made by the company’s Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk. They believe that these never-ending modifications to boost revenue are cataclysmic and fail to improve customer satisfaction.
In a recent development, Musk announced a few significant changes to Twitter’s operations. Which are aimed at tackling the issue of data scraping and system manipulation. By restricting users’ access to a certain number of tweets. Twitter will temporarily limit the number of tweets users can read per day. Users will now be required to sign in to view tweets. And tweet previews will no longer be available when sharing links among fellow Twitter users.
Musk labeled the rampant scraping of Twitter data by numerous artificial intelligence companies an aggressive practice. He warned that online media services lacking verification could turn into platforms that are heavily populated by bots. While acknowledging that scraping was prohibited in Twitter’s terms and conditions, he explained that scraping organizations often masked their IPs or operated through seemingly legitimate means.
To address these challenges, Musk outlined specific limitations on daily tweet views. Verified users, primarily subscribers of the Twitter Blue program, will have access to 6,000 posts per day. Unverified accounts and newly created unverified accounts will only be able to see 600 and 300 posts per day.
He equally expressed willingness to pursue legal action against data thieves. Which he noted would take two to three years before the cases reached court. Recall that Musk had cut off OpenAI’s access to Twitter in December 2022, reportedly due to concerns over insufficient compensation for licensing the platform’s data.
Several Twitter Changes and Tweaks Elon Musk Has Made Since Acquisition
Ever since Musk acquired Twitter, he has made quite a number of alterations. Here are some of the Twitter changes to keep in mind.
Twitter users who are not logged in are now being prompted to sign in when attempting to view tweets, potentially indicating a ploy to push non-users into creating accounts. The platform’s recent changes, including this one, may have unintended consequences such as reduced visibility on search engines and user annoyance.
Elon Musk, although no longer CEO but still involved in operations, might be motivated by preventing AI tools from accessing Twitter. Following his criticism of Microsoft for using Twitter’s data without permission. The bird app’s technical issues still persist under the new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, with unexplained user suspensions and uncertain policies. All fingers point to Musk as the influence.
Twitter’s Encrypted DMs, Inactive Accounts Policy, Cheaper Verification
In May 2023, Twitter introduced encrypted direct messages (DMs) to guarantee that messages sent privately between users are more secure and protected. The encryption feature is just for verified Blue users and Twitter accounts associated with verified brands. Following this update, Twitter went ahead to make it possible the ability for tweeps to react to DMs using different new emojis.
Elon Musk also disclosed that Twitter would actively remove old accounts that have been completely inactive for a long time. That same month, it was announced that Twitter had their sight on creating a cheaper verification option specifically for SMBs.
Bug Fixes, Long Character Tweets, Bans, Verification, Layoffs, and More
Twitter faced several security and technical issues in 2023 which were identified and fixed. Including the visibility of tweets from private Circle accounts to users outside of those Circles. This was confirmed by Twitter in May through an email sent to Circle users.
In April 2023, the European Union criticized Twitter for not making the digital information space safer and free from disinformation. There were also reports of Twitter users being randomly logged out of their accounts. Some other users experienced a bug that temporarily restored their blue verification checkmark by updating their bio, but it disappeared upon page refresh.
Twitter further introduced a new feature called Twitter Blue, a paid subscription service. At first, it offered features like 4,000-character tweets for paid users. But currently allows subscribers to write and tweet 10,000 characters. Along with the inclusion of bold and italic text formatting. The app’s verification system suffered criticism when Elon Musk removed the blue checkmarks from verified accounts. And claimed that blue checkmarks would be reserved for Twitter Blue subscribers only.
Another one of Twitter changes or shall we say update-turned-uproar was the new API tiers and discontinued old access levels, which lead to dissatisfaction among developers. It has also made various updates to its interface, search features, ad policy, etc. Twitter since its acquisition by Musk has implemented multiple rounds of layoffs. Reducing its staff from about 7,500 employees to less than 2,000.
Bottomline
These Twitter changes appear to have caused problems for so many Twitter users who experienced difficulties seeing new tweets on their feeds. The news triggered a mix of confusion and a renewed motivation among users to explore alternative platforms. Such as Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Jack Dorsey’s BlueSky, Tumblr, etc. We hope the billionaire CTO is ready to dance to the music. Given users’ growing interest in finding new social media options.
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