Twitter’s default 'For You' feed to only recommend verified accounts

Voting in polls on the platform will also be restricted to non-verified users, starting from mid-April, Elon Musk says

Elon Muck has said Twitter will remove legacy verification status for users who do not pay the fee, starting from April 1. Reuters

Twitter's default “For You” feed will only recommend content from accounts that are verified, starting from next month, according to its billionaire owner and chief executive Elon Musk.

“Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations. [This] is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle,” Mr Musk tweeted on Monday.

“Voting in polls will require verification for same reason,” he said.

“That said, it’s ok to have verified bot accounts if they follow terms of service and don’t impersonate a human,” Mr Musk added.

Getting a verified account costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for Android, iPhone and iPad users, according to Twitter's website.

Subscribers can see fewer advertisements, post longer videos and have their content featured more prominently.

They will also have early access to Twitter's newest features before they’re available to everyone.

Mr Musk tweeted that new users can get the blue verification for $7 per month.

The latest move comes as Twitter gets ready to remove legacy verification status for users who do not pay the fee, starting from April 1.

After his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion in October, Mr Musk has been trying to boost the social media platform's revenue by pushing more people to pay for a premium subscription.

Twitter is also moving forward with plans to introduce a payments feature on its platform, steering it towards Mr Musk's plans to tap into new revenue streams, the Financial Times reported in January.

The company's revenue and adjusted earnings plunged by 40 per cent on an annual basis in December as several advertisers withdrew after Mr Musk took charge of the company, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

In Twitter's last financial report before its acquisition, the company swung to a net loss of more than $270 million in the second quarter of 2022, compared with a net income of about $65.6 million in the same period a year earlier.