Friday evening, Twitter announced that the number of private messages per day would be limited for users who do not subscribe to its paid plan. The announcement was met with a number of negative comments.
Twitter will impose a limit on the number of private messages per day
Since the arrival of Elon Musk at the helm of Twitter, the social network has been undergoing a number of changes, the latest of which concerns the number of private messages that can be sent per day. It was announced on Friday that these will be limited, for users who are not Twitter Blue subscribers.
The alleged reason given for this choice is a desire to reduce the number of spam messages :
“We’ll soon be implementing a few changes in our efforts to reduce spam in Private Messages. Unverified accounts will have daily limits on the number of PMs they can send. “
Instead of offering attractive new features to promote its paid plan, it seems that Twitter is choosing to restrict features that were previously free. To date, Twitter Blue costs 9.6 euros per month or 100.8 euros per year.
Unsurprisingly, the news has not been received particularly favorably, with many users denouncing it as a strategy designed to encourage users to take out a paid subscription:
It seems like messages between mutuals should be exempt.
The people I made the decision to follow, and who follow me as well, are not where the spam is coming from.
If you make mutuals pay $8/mo to message each other, it will look like it’s more about the money than the spam.
– Amygator *not an actual alligator (@AmyA1A) July 21, 2023
An existing solution
Furthermore, other users have pointed out that a filter already exists so that an account can choose who is able to write to it or not. In fact, all you have to do is go to Settings, to follow “Privacy and Safety” and “Direct Messages” to change the settings.
The angle of attack chosen here to reduce bots and spam may be questionable, even though features already exist.
At the same time, said bots are still particularly present on Twitter in other aspects that have not yet been addressed, whether in comments under publications or through untimely identifications, and particularly in the cryptocurrency sector.
For the time being, Twitter has not yet shared the ceiling that will be imposed by the forthcoming limits.
