While it is being discussed whether Twitter will become paid for some and if it will eventually return to being public, the platform in question, grappling with the spam problem, has started testing a function to restrict the audience of tweets.
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For a few weeks now it has been known how Musk has practically bought 100% of Twitter for 44 billion dollars (although some rumors predict that in three years there could be a return to the social market, at that point subject to various changes, through an Initial Public Offering that would allow the tycoon to obtain a nice capital gain). The platform has recently been at the center of rumors regarding stances, perspectives on becoming partially paid, and the launch of an important test.
As is known, the microblog of the blue canary is about to pass under the control of Tesla’s Elon Musk. In the past few hours, this prospect has attracted two stances: the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), through its Republican member, stated that even if the decision to approve the acquisition were within the competence of the institution, the latter should welcome the operation, and not oppose it, because “Americans value free speech”. The creator of Mighty App, Suhail Doshi, meanwhile, expressed his closeness to the CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal who will almost certainly leave the platform after closing, obtaining in response a thank you from the interested party and an invitation to worry more about the service. himself and the people who improve him, admitting, almost in a sort of farewell, that his mission, for which he thanks the staff who supported him, was to improve the platform, correcting the route where necessary and strengthening the service .
Meanwhile, spam accounts are certainly among the concerns of the future owner of Twitter. According to Time, which reports an audit by SparkToro, 48% of the accounts that Musk follows, 87.9 million followers, are fake, with this type that would include, in addition to bots, propaganda or spam accounts, also unreachable users. and no longer active on Twitter, who will not see the content published by his account. Among the most suspicious characteristics of these accounts, observed on a small sample (2,000) drawn from the last 100,000 accounts that have followed the billionaire, is the low number of boasted followers. On the other hand, the platform announced that, of the daily active monetizable users registered in the first quarter 2022 (229 million), only 5% would be made up of fake or spam accounts. Regarding the spam problem, in any case, Musk’s position seems, compared to the beginning (authenticating every real person), to have softened since, in a question and answer with the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabe, the Tesla CEO said a balance needs to be struck between authentication and anonymity, which some think is very important.
In the past, Musk had spoken about the Blue subscription, arguing that it should have cost less, be free of advertising, and also allow payment in DogeCoin, only to then delete the tweet in which he expressed these wishes. However, it is not clear what Blue’s future will be if Musk’s new purpose should materialize, that is to keep Twitter free for casual users and to make those who use it pay for work, such as commercial and governmental.
Finally, Twitter has announced that it has started testing a function similar to Instagram’s close friends, which allows you to select a closer circle of users to share posts with. Specifically, the function known as Twitter Circle, in tests with some users, allows you to add up to 150 users who will see the posts (unlike all the others) published. The operation is simple and requires that, having created a tweet, before publishing it, just click on the “Choose audience” menu and select the option to share the content with your Circle.