The Twitter application is seen on a digital device, Monday, April 25, 2022, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday that soon only blue check mark accounts will appear in the platform's recommendation or feed. Right now, an algorithm determines which tweets appear in the "For You" view, which features some posts from accounts you don't follow.
The change, set to begin April 15, would make it so only accounts that pay for the blue check mark designation make the cut.
"[This] is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over," Musk tweeted. "It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle."
In addition, only those users would be able to vote in polls.
The announcement is the latest attempt by Musk to overhaul the struggling social media platform since he purchased it last year. His last major change was launching a subscription service for $8 a month that allows users to essentially pay for verification. Legacy verified accounts now would be required to pay for the subscription as well to keep the check mark.
Previously, Twitter used verification as a way to make sure accounts are matched with the actual people they are presenting as on the platform. When the subscription service first launched, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was hit with a stock selloff after a user with a blue check spoofed its official account and announced that insulin would now be free of charge.
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Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
