More controversial changes are coming to Twitter, with the social media platform set to implement daily direct message (DM) limits for unverified users.
In a July 21 tweet, Twitter support said the platform “soon will be implementing some changes in our effort to reduce spam in Direct Messages.”
It said “unverified accounts will have a daily limit on the number of DMs they can send,” as it prompted users to sign up for Twitter Blue, its subscription service.
We’ll be implementing some changes soon in our effort to reduce spam in Direct Messages. Unverified accounts will have a daily limit on the number of DMs they can send. Subscribe today to send more messages: https://t.co/0CI4NTRw75
– Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) 21 July 2023
It has not been specified what the daily limits will be at this stage, however there has been a relatively negative reaction in the comments, with both verified and unverified expressing their opinion on the move.
Top Comment User @FGRAdam has over 1000 likes at the time of writing, and offers a skeptical outlook on the upcoming change:
“Changes like this will cause other apps to start competing, don’t limit your users to basic things, Twitter is not about that. The purpose of paying for Twitter Blue is so that we can have additional features, not to take away a normal, free feature and put a paywall behind it.”
“In our opinion, this is a sales funnel to get more users to verify and engage [Twitter] blue, not for dealing with spam,” couple Popular citizen journalist account @AustimCapital.
Many users also argued that limiting DMs to unverified accounts would potentially enable verified accounts to spam in DMs.
While others suggested that Twitter’s move is to motivate people to pay for verification to cover its huge operating costs, rather than to fight spam.
It seems Twitter can no longer afford to pay for enough server capacity to support DMs. https://t.co/6ovxRxNPVL
— David Olsen (@DDsD) 21 July 2023
The upcoming move follows several radical changes to the platform that have been introduced under the ownership of Elon Musk.
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On July 1, in order to curb data scraping and “system manipulation”, Twitter imposed a significant rate limit on the number of posts users could view per day.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta then launches Twitter alternatives instagram threads, Which attracted a lot of initial publicity and a large enough user base to implement its own rate caps on July 18.
In April, Twitter also introduced content monetization settings on its platform, enabling creators to monetize all types of posts globally.
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