Twitter announced today that they will implement a new messages setting on July 14th to reduce spam in users’ inboxes. Only messages from people the user follows will appear in their primary inbox, while messages from Verified users they do not follow will be moved to their “Message Request” inbox. Thanks that Twitter Admits Spammer problem in DM.
Everyone who opens their inbox to allow messages from anyone will now be able to receive messages from anyone on Twitter, regardless of whether the sender is a Verified user.
Starting as soon as July 14th, we’re adding a new messages setting that should help reduce the number of spam messages in DMs. With the new setting enabled, messages from users who you follow will arrive in your primary inbox, and messages from verified users who you don’t follow…
— Support (@Support) July 13, 2023
If you’ve sent someone a DM in the past, they’ll be able to DM you again without having to follow you first.
You will now receive messages from users that you follow in your primary inbox. Messages from Verified users that you do not follow will now arrive in your Message Request inbox.
Verification showed that someone was a public or well-known figure, such as a politician, celebrity, athlete, journalist, or other famous individual. By allowing anyone with a credit card to get the Verified checkmark, Twitter reduced the value of verification.
People have become angered by the amount of Verified user spam clogging up their main inbox, even though they initially allowed it.
This demonstrates that Twitter has a Verified user spam issue. Users can reset their settings to receive DMs from Verified users in their main inbox if they choose to do so after the changes are implemented.
Journalists will now have a harder time contacting sources for more information or permission to use a tweet. This is because Musk has taken away their verification badges, and even if they pay to be Verified, their DMs will go to the Message Requests folder which may not be seen.
Users responded to Twitter’s announcement by pointing out that the update does not actually reduce spam from Verified users or otherwise, but rather moves those messages to a different folder.
Elon Musk had proclaimed that reducing spam and bots on Twitter would be one of his major objectives after buying the social network for $44 billion last year. However, The Wall St. Journal recently reported that fake and spam accounts are still a major issue on the platform.
The report noted that, by at least one measure of bot activity, the degree of bot activity has remained the same after Musk’s takeover. Last month, Musk also claimed that Twitter had eliminated at least 90% of scams and spam on the platform.
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