Twitter to put TweetDeck behind a paywall
NEW YORK - Another controversial change is coming to Twitter.
Soon, only verified users will be able to access TweetDeck, the dashboard that allows users to organize and easily monitor the accounts they follow, the platform tweeted Monday. Many businesses and media organizations use the feature to manage and track different feeds.
The change will go into effect in a month.
It's the latest change by billionaire owner Elon Musk, who took over the company last year and has since sought to add revenue streams to the social media giant - even as some users have protested the changes.
In April Musk began offering a blue check mark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue subscription service.
The news of the TweetDeck paywall came days after Musk announced temporary reading limits on Twitter, restricting verified users to reading 10,000 tweets a day, along with 1,000 tweets for unverified accounts and 500 for new unverified accounts. Musk said it was due to "extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation," though that reasoning hasn't been confirmed.
The company tweeted it was releasing a "new, improved version of TweetDeck" but added that all saved searches, lists and columns would carry over to the new site.
"In 30 days, users must be Verified to access TweetDeck," the tweet said.
Users had complained about the old version of TweetDeck being down after Musk implemented the reading limits.
And just before that, Twitter appeared to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account.
Twitter faced an exodus of advertisers when Musk took over.
