Yet another day, yet another strange-sounding stuff coming in from Twitter’s new owner — Elon Musk. In a tweet, Musk has announced that starting April 15th, “only verified accounts will be eligible to be in ‘For You’ recommendations”. He also feels, that “it is ok” to have verified bot accounts impersonate humans and come up in that ‘For You’ timeline, as long as they follow terms of service.
According to Musk, this seems to be the only “realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle”.
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
Off late, and specially after twitter made those blue ticks available to all via a payment, a swarm of AI-powered bots, all with verified statuses, seem to have taken over the micro-blogging platform. Several known personalities have found their impersonated bots, with verified blue ticks, fooling users to think it is from the personality they follow. These bots are also being used to increase follower counts drastically, and spread misinformation.
However, many feel, that this latest dictat from Musk, may not really solve those issues. Users have anyways not liked the new ‘For You’ algorithmic timeline much, and with this new decisions, there is high chance of your feed being filled with branded content.
Musk also said that going forward only verified accounts will be able to take part in polls. However, as is the case with most of his anouncements, there is no clarity on whether this is meant for polls created by Twitter (or him) or all polls on the platform.
