Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk, who suspended the accounts of more than a half-dozen prominent journalists and later restore them, will now be incorporating ‘mute’ and ‘block’ signals for Blue Verified.
Musk announced on Twitter that the platform “will start incorporating mute and block signals from Blue Verified (not Legacy Blue) as downvotes”.
Further Musk said that all actions of Twitter users will factor into a “NN model” (neural networks) for a tweet and the account tweeting, including positive actions. As per IBM Cloud Education, neural networks reflect the behavior of the human brain, allowing computer programs to recognize patterns and solve common problems in the fields of AI, machine learning, and deep learning.
Another thing that Musk announced yesterday was that Twitter will make it easier to see tweets from just “those you follow, as well as other tweet curations”.
Since the time Musk took over the microblogging site, he has announced a range of changes in Twitter’s policy, one of them being Twitter Blue.
Last week, Musk resumed selling its Twitter Blue premium offering, which gives users a blue verification badge by their names, following a weeks-long pause because some subscribers were using the paid service to impersonate well-known accounts.
To avail of the Twitter blue service , a user needs to pay $8 a month. The service provides a checkmark in a blue badge next to their profile pictures and will be able to edit tweets, among other perks. Twitter Blue subscribers will also see half as many advertisements as regular users and added that the company is planning to sell subscriptions for an ad-free version of the service later next year.
Musk is also taking a subtle shot at Apple Inc. as part of Twitter Blue’s relaunch. The company will charge users $11 per month if they subscribe through the Twitter app for Apple’s iOS, an effort to recoup fees collected by Apple for in-app purchases. Musk has repeatedly complained about those fees, calling them a “de facto global tax on the internet.”
Users who don’t pay for Twitter Blue will lose their verification badges “in a few months,” Musk said in the past.
The 51-year-old is trying to make Twitter less reliant on advertising by steering users toward its Blue subscription service. But ad services generated nearly 90% of its $5.1 billion in revenue last year, with a good chunk coming from Apple.
Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.