Now X posts can lock replies to only allow comment from verified accounts
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The latest turn in the Elon Musk-directed platform X, previously known as Twitter, is that users can now block unverified accounts from replying to their posts.
This change arrives about 11 months after Musk launched paid verification for Twitter Blue, apportioning blue checkmark labels to people willing to part with $7.99 per month. It also means it could be harder for those who don’t pay for the service (with the exception of accounts forced into verified status) to refute misinformation, which researchers report has continued to increase.
There’s an argument that limiting replies to accounts verified by payment, phone number, or perhaps even government ID could reduce harassment, trolling, and misinformation.
However, that argument is quickly undone, whether by the continued presence of bots with verified labels or a quick look at the current state of the platform.
Since X already prioritizes replies from verified accounts, it’s easy to evaluate the quality of threads populated by paid checkmark posters. One response to X’s post announcing the feature’s availability, from “Dave the reply guy,” gleefully called it “pay to win
-The Verge
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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