According to Elon Musk, Twitter is still seeing negative cash flow, “due to a drop in advertising revenue” – and that might explain the platform’s new hard, desperate push to get more users to sign up for a Twitter Blue subscription.
This new feature has changed the settings of every user with ‘open’ DMs, ensuring non-Twitter Blue subscribers can’t message them. Basically, your DMs are now one big Twitter Blue ad.
We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.July 15, 2023
Twitter began rolling out new settings for direct messages, adding a third option to the normal ‘let everyone message me’ or ‘only let users I follow message me’. The existing options meant you had complete control over who contacts you and who you want to keep in contact with.
This new third option – which has apparently been set as the default for every user – allows users to receive DMs only from users they follow and verified Twitter users. This may have been pretty great news back when the verification system actually made sense and was made up of athletes, celebrities, and media personalities, but now it’s a potential source of harassment.
Under the new default settings, anyone paying $8 per month for Twitter Blue can send you a message – regardless of whether you actually know them.
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…July 13, 2023
Twitter announced the change on the official Twitter Support account, which acts as a basic admission that Twitter Blue subscriptions users can now spam your inbox even though the subscription was paraded by Musk as a way to curb such annoyances.
Your DMs are divided into two inboxes: a primary one and a secondary, ‘message request’ inbox. Most messages from non-followers go straight into your request box, so if the DM message button is enabled on your account, messages from non-followers go there.
This new feature makes the message icon appear for all users when subscribed to Twitter Blue. So, even if you don’t normally have your DMs set to ‘open’, Twitter blue users will still be able to hit you up.
Don’t worry, you can change it back
As we said, this is a setting that has annoyingly been made the new default by Twitter – but that doesn’t mean you can’t change it back.
Head to your message section on your Twitter account, it’ll have a little envelope icon. Once you’re in the primary inbox, hit the settings button and you’ll see three messaging options. The ‘allow messages from Verified users only’ option is the new one, and the one you’ll want to turn off if you don’t want to be messaged by Twitter Blue patrons.
WTF Twitter.I started to see little to no DMs: and I keep my DMs open at all times, on purpose.Twitter SILENTLY changed my (maybe everyone’s?) settings to only allow messages from only people I follow + verified users.Go to Settings -> Privacy and safety -> DMs to change it pic.twitter.com/41GRzulbw9July 15, 2023
This recent attempt to shove Twitter Blue and its subscribers in our faces seems like another desperate attempt from Musk to plug a few holes in his sinking ship. It’s a shame to see the once-dominant social media platform reduced to cartoonishly silly ‘marketing’ gimmicks and general disarray. The last thing anyone wants is blue-checked weirdos sending them DMs, right?
