The relationship between Twitter and Elon Musk is as complicated as that of a human being. It saw its glorious days, but it has been through many turbulent times but still going strong! When the billionaire announced his acquisition of the platform, there was relief due to the constant censorship on Twitter. Musk assured to make it into a “digital square of democracy”. But, when the acquisition process was completed, the picture was completely different. Rather than bringing an organized system, Musk ensued chaos with his new role as the CEO.
He had been going through a trial-and-error method to organize this eternal chaos. Elon’s buyout did not receive a positive welcome from the advertisers as they pulled out their advertisements. This affected the company financially. So, as a remedy, he started layoffs at the company. The next step was to bring radical changes in policies and revamp the interface. One of his first failed attempts at it was to bring an $8 monthly subscription. But, in this ongoing introduction of policies, he has now introduced another financial policy charging the verification process during a login.
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Elon Musk-Led Twitter Will Introduce The Text Message Authentication Only For Twitter Blue Subscribers
The revenue on Twitter is visibly dwindling. The new CEO is in debt due to the large funding he had to provide to complete the $44 billion deal. On top of that, in October 2022, all the advertisers pulled out their advertisements from Twitter.
It is reported that the top 100 advertisers have stopped advertising on Twitter. The advertisers spent $750 million on advertising, but now, the advertisement revenue has become scarce.
Later, Elon Musk introduced a monthly fee of $7.99 to sweep out any imitating account providing the subscriber exclusive feature via Twitter Blue. However, the experiment did not go well, so he stalled the process. However, in December 2022, the Tesla owner reintroduced the system in a completely revamped manner with new features. Now, along with exclusive features, these subscribers will also enjoy certain security perks with a two-factor authentication process getting shifted to the messaging services.
On February 17th, 2023, Twitter Support announced that “Only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to use text messages as their two-factor authentication method” starting from March 20th, 2023. If the non-subscribers are logged into the app via other devices using the messaging system, they will not be able to do so. The announcement also read, “Other accounts can use an authentication app or security key for 2FA”.
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The System Will Help Recover Operation Costs
This messaging two-factor authentication program is significant for not letting anyone hack into any account. It is not clear how viable the system is for the security of an account. But clearly, the system is in place to reduce the operation cost as this message authentication incurs costs. So, to recover them, they are providing this service exclusively to Twitter Blue individuals.
In its article, Twitter Support reasoned why they are introducing the SMS 2FA system. It read, “While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately, we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used — and abused — by bad actors”. The CEO himself also weighed on why Twitter is introducing the feature. Musk replied to a tweet writing, “Twitter is getting scammed by phone companies for $60M/year of fake 2FA SMS messages”.
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