Twitter will display accounts subscribed by users

Twitter breaches user privacy to publicly display users' paid subscriptions on their profile with no option to hide it


Tech Desk May 25, 2023
The Twitter App loads on an iPhone in this illustration photograph taken in Los Angeles, California, US, July 22, 2019. PHOTO: REUTERS

Twitter's feature, 'Subscripions' enables users to pay a monthly fee to their favorite Twitter creators in exchange for exclusive, paywalled tweets. The platform has now introduced a metric that will publicly display which users are paying to subscribe to that creator.

The addition doesn't come as a surprise as Musk had been promoting the Subscription feature in an April tweet of a screenshot that revealed that nearly 25,000 users were subscribing to other Twitter accounts on the platform. An internal email also showed Musk urging his employees to subscribe to creators through Subscriptions.

Elon Musk's Twitter account also shows that he's subscribed to 75 creators including a few meme accounts and right-wing personalities.

Read: Twitter crashes during Ron DeSantis US presidential run announcement

There is no option to hide your paid subscriptions from the public, which is only available for subscriber labels that show up when a user replies to a tweet from a subscribed creator account.

According to Mashable, Twitter users were caught off-guard by the sudden feature, and feel uncomfortable with their subscriptions being displayed publicly on their profile. While it seems to breach a few user privacy rules, some have welcomed it to get to know more about personalities and other people.

 

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