Elon Musk Makes Twitter ‘For You’ Show Only Tweets from Verified Accounts

Elon Musk announced that starting April 15, Twitter’s “‘For You”’ recommendations will only show tweets from verified accounts. 

According to the CEO’s tweet, the changes will be made as it is the “only realistic way” to address AI bot swarms “taking over.”  

Poll voting will also be exclusive to accounts with the blue check mark – a feature that Musk teased late last year. 

Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations.

The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.

Voting in polls will require verification for same reason.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023

In a reply to his original tweet, Musk also mentioned that verified bot accounts will still be allowed on the platform as long as they follow the terms of service and don’t impersonate a human. 

The latest updates come after the social media app announced last week its plans to remove legacy verified checkmarks starting April 1. For verified accounts to maintain their blue check marks, they’ll have to sign up for Twitter Blue and pay $7/month.  

On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks. To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here: https://t.co/gzpCcwOpLp

Organizations can sign up for https://t.co/RlN5BbuGA3…

— Twitter Verified (@verified) March 23, 2023

The move has since been criticized by many Twitter users. 

“The verification system was literally created for safety reasons to verify that the public figure was actually them. This helped avoid situations like catfishing, scams, etc. It’s now been completely devalued and anyone can be ‘anyone’ since they don’t even verify ID’s anymore,” one user tweeted.  

“On April 1st, I’ll be blocking anyone who paid Elon for a blue checkmark,” another wrote. 

In his defense, the CEO said last Monday that paid account social media is the only way Twitter can address the increase of bot activity. 

“Given that modern AI can solve any “prove you’re not a robot” tests, it’s now trivial to spin up 100k human-like bots for less than a penny per account. Paid verification increases bot cost by ~10,000% & makes it much easier to identify bots by phone & CC clustering,” Musk explained.