Musk's Twitter is changing yet again — and this time it's making you pay for visibility

Tweetbot on iPhone
(Image credit: Future)

The Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk says that the For You page is changing, and it'll mean that you're likely to see more verified accounts than ever before.

That's because Musk's Twitter will soon only recommend tweets from people who have a verified account, whether that's via Twitter Blue or because they're a business or government entity. Everyone else? Your tweets won't appear organically as part of the Twitter algorithm.

Twitter has historically pushed its algorithm as a growth and engagement engine, but that will all change on April 15 when the change takes place.

No recommendations for you!

Musk announced the change via a post on Twitter, saying that "only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations" as of the middle of April.

Further, Musk also confirmed that only those who have a verified account will be able to vote on polls from the same date. The reason? Musk says that both changes are coming in an attempt to try and deal with "AI bot swarms."

One way to make sure that you have more chance of people seeing your tweets will be to sign up for Twitter Blue.  Priced at $8 per month or $84 per year, in-app when bought on the web, or $11 per month or $114.99 per year when bought via the App Store, Twitter Blue gives you that all-important verified checkmark. You'll also get a handful of other features that are neither here nor there, too.

At that price, it's debatable how many people will sign up for Twitter Blue just to get in on the act. Save your money and you'll be on your way to buying even Apple's best iPhone when the new models arrive this fall. We'd wager an iPhone 15 is probably a better way to spend that money anyway.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.

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