Twitter announces new changes for users

December 19, 2022 at 9:06 AM

Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk has now announced a few changes for Twitter Blue users, including ‘mute’ and ‘block’ signals for Blue Verified.

According to a report published in Livemint, Elon Musk, who suspended the accounts of more than a half-dozen prominent journalists and later restored them, made the announcement on Twitter on Saturday and said that the platform will start incorporating mute and block signals from Blue Verified (not Legacy Blue) as downvotes.

The report also mentioned that Musk said all actions of Twitter users will factor into a “NN” (neural networks) model for a tweet and the account tweeting, including positive actions. 

As per IBM Cloud Education, neural networks reflect the behaviour of the human brain, thereby allowing computer programs to recognise patterns and solve common problems in the fields of AI, machine learning, and deep learning.

Another thing that Elon Musk announced was that Twitter will make it easier to see tweets from just those followed by users, as well as other tweet curations.

Ever since Musk took charge of the micro-blogging platform, he has announced a slew of changes, including Twitter Blue. Last week, Musk resumed selling the Twitter Blue premium offering, which provides Twitter users with a blue verification badge by their names. The verification badge service was resumed after a long pause because some subscribers were using the paid service by the platform to impersonate renowned accounts.

In order to avail of Twitter blue service, a user is required to pay $8 a month. 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.

As part of the Twitter Blue relaunch, Elon Musk is also taking a shot at Apple Inc. 

As per reports, 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 in the past repeatedly complained about such fees, referring to them as a “de facto global tax on the internet”. (Business Standard)