these changes are coming (and it’s not nice)
Elon Musk is going to make quite a few changes on the Twitter platform. We put his plans together for you!
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Contents
Acquisition of Elon Musk
Elon Musk took over Twitter for $44 billion in late October. The Tesla CEO made no secret of wanting to make major changes and immediately fired the top of the company after his takeover.
Musk indicated that he has the amount ‘spam bots‘ on Twitter and want to make Twitter the platform for free speech again. These changes are currently on the schedule if it is up to Elon Musk.
Paying for the famous blue checkmark
Perhaps the most important update Elon Musk plans to make on Twitter is making authentication available to every user. This means that with a Twitter Blue subscription of $7.99 per month, you can add a blue check mark to your account.
This update was originally planned for early November, but according to The New York Times the platform now waits until after the midterm elections in the United States. That’s not without reason: the blue tick next to someone’s name now gives a certain value to tweets. It remains to be seen how this will change once everyone has access to the blue tick.
In any case, Elon Musk already indicated in a response that anyone who abuses the new verification system will be banned from the platform for life.
Fewer ads for subscribers
Are you done with all the random ads on Twitter? Elon Musk plans to tweak the advertising system for Twitter Blue users. Subscribers will see half as many ads on Twitter. Moreover, according to Musk, the ads you see become twice as relevant to you as a user.
As a user, you can easily find out what these personal advertisements are based on in the future. According to Musk, you should be able to easily view the data collected about you as part of a more transparent policy. Whether this will actually be the case remains to be seen.
Newsfeed: paying users get priority
Another benefit of having a Twitter Blue subscription is getting priority over other users’ newsfeeds. Tweets and comments from subscribers are prioritized, which means ‘spam bots‘ fade into the background, according to Musk.
This means that even if you don’t have a Twitter Blue subscription, your comment will rarely appear at the top. Your tweets and comments and from your friends without a Twitter Blue subscription are less visible, so you will see each other’s tweets a lot less quickly. For the average user, this new feature is therefore a major disadvantage.
Longer tweets and videos
Currently, a tweet can be up to 280 characters. Musk previously indicated that he is in favor of making tweets longer, but has not yet made any statements about how long tweets will be.
What Musk did provide more clarity about is the length of videos on Twitter. At the moment, videos have a maximum length of 140 seconds, but Musk announced – of course on Twitter – that videos must already have a maximum length of 42 minutes by next month. So a big expansion.
This change also applies to Twitter Blue subscribers. Musk indicated that this will be the maximum length for now, but also hints at an even longer video length in the future.
Editing a posted tweet: now you can
Many Twitter users were annoyed that tweets can no longer be edited once they are online. With Musk now as Twitter chief, it seems only a matter of time before a new edit button comes to all users.
The new edit button gives every user (including non-subscribers) the chance to edit the message up to thirty minutes after posting the tweet. The tweet is then provided with a label, which allows users to see that the tweet has been edited. Previous versions of the tweet will also remain visible.
Switch to the alternative: Mastodon
Many Twitter users decided not to wait for Musk’s upcoming changes and to switch to Mastodon, the Twitter alternative of the moment. It remains to be seen what Twitter will look like in a while, but Musk is at least keeping things busy.
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