Twitter CEO Elon Musk recently announced that only verified Twitter accounts would be eligible to vote in polls starting April 15, ostensibly to counter address advanced AI bot swarms. The move drew sharp criticism from Twitter users.
Musk also said only verified accounts will be eligible to be in Twitter's For You recommendations, which displays a stream of tweets from accounts on Twitter.
According to him, this is the only realistic way to advance AI bot swarms taking over. And for the same reason, voting in polls requires verifications.
This announcement was immediately met with criticism, however, Musk brushed it off. In the comment section, one Twitter user said, "I don't get behind this decision". The user stated that Twitter needed to invest in AI tech to detect bots on the platform. He also added that allowing only verified accounts to vote in polls would tarnish the reputation of the platform.
Responding to this, the Twitter chief predicted that changes to Twitter will make it the most trusted platform in the coming months. "My prediction is that this will be the only platform you can trust," he said.
Several other users also said that the move would essentially render their 'For You' recommendations useless. "So the For You is not actually for me. It's useless. Got it," one user tweeted. "Just delete the whole website man, you clearly had zero understanding of why it was valuable in the first place," said another.
Last year, Musk had said Twitter would restrict voting on policy-related polls to paying Twitter Blue subscribers.