Elon Musk-led Twitter has had a lot of changes since the billionaire got hold of the company. In a recent development, Twitter will soon restrict the number of direct messages – DMs that an unverified account can send on the micro-blogging platform. Musk’s company made the announcement on Saturday that said that the latest update will be reducing the spam messages in DMs.
95% fall in hate speech on Twitter Since Musk running the show
The announcement read, “We’ll soon be implementing some changes in our effort to reduce spam in Direct Messages. Unverified accounts will have daily limits on the number of DMs they can send”. It can be checked here
But users who are availing of paid Twitter services will have no daily limits for DMs. The idea of the company is to motivate users to sign up for Twitter Blue. Twitter although has not yet announced detailed information about the restrictions it plans to impose on the social network.
This move comes just a few days after the company launched a feature that limited unverified accounts from texting users who are not followers of them. This definitely helped to cut down the spam in Direct Messages by 70% as against the earlier week, said Twitter on Saturday.
Before also, Musk had temporarily reduced the number of tweets that users can view on a daily basis to address the issue of extreme levels of data scrapping and system manipulation. Unverified accounts had the ability to read up to 800 posts and verified accounts can access up to 10,000 tweets.
The company also restricted users from checking out tweets or comments on the platform unless they had an account and were logged in to Twitter. This move was stopped earlier in July 2023.
In October 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter in a deal worth $44 billion, thus creating a spark of controversies since then.
Twitter Blue is the idea of Musk to increase its profits beyond the general advertising packages. Indian users on Twitter can access the web service for a monthly fee of Rs 650 whereas it costs Rs 900 on mobile devices. Companies can register for a ‘Verified for Organisations’ program, whose subscription plan starts at $1,000 on a monthly basis.
It has been really unsurprising to notice so many terrific changes in Twitter since the Tesla and SpaceX CEOs zealously took over the company. The rules are made by Musk but the check marks really don’t matter to him. He wants to get rid of spam bots and that’s why the innovations in his platform are being introduced on a regular basis. However, his attempt to protect free speech won’t be really covered in these initiatives.
If users get charged for freely sharing their opinions on a platform, then they would better opt for free platforms with a multitude of features that will even keep their content safe and spam-free. Innovation in technology is progressive but if it affects the pocket of common citizens of any country, then such technology cannot sustain its long-term business. There will be always other competitor companies to come up with better plans to avail tech-driven services for common people.
