Elon Musk's Twitter antics continue to make headlines, with the latest development being his announcement that Twitter's algorithmic "For You" timeline will only show verified accounts starting April 15th. Musk justified the move as a necessary measure to combat "advanced AI bot swarms" that have been taking over the platform. While the decision to prohibit non-verified accounts from recommendations seems aimed at tackling bots, Musk clarified that "verified" bots that do not impersonate humans would still be eligible to appear on the timeline. This means that only paid users, brands, or government officials with verified accounts will be recommended by Twitter's algorithm going forward. Twitter has been trying to promote its algorithmic "For You" timeline despite receiving negative feedback from many users. The recent decision to make it a verified-only feed is unlikely to be well-received either. However, analysts suggest that only a small fraction of Twitter's users (385,000) are paid accounts, and the company is also removing legacy verification checkmarks from previously notable accounts. This means that the timeline will be dominated by paid accounts, brands, and officials' accounts, making it a potentially skewed experience for users who follow a diverse range of accounts. Elon Musk also announced that only verified accounts will be allowed to participate in polls on the platform moving forward. It's unclear if this applies to all polls or just those created by Twitter or Musk. As always, the announcement has left some confusion in its wake. Last year, Twitter faced backlash after briefly implementing a policy to ban links to other social networks like Facebook and Instagram. Musk had previously promised that major policy decisions would be subject to polls, but this has not been the case. In fact, he even launched a poll asking people if he should step down as CEO, with 57.5% voting in favor of his resignation. After these events, several people suggested that bots accounted for a lot of these votes. At that time, Musk took note of a user suggestion to limit policy voting to only paying subscribers. It looks like he’s finally implementing this change. This development comes in the wake of GitHub taking down a repository of leaked Twitter sourced code. Musk has promised to open source the social network’s recommendation algorithm on March 31.
