Elon Musk makes Twitter verification mandatory to access TweetDeck

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has introduced more changes to Twitter restricting the use of TweetDeck to verified users only, it emerged Monday.

The social media company said that users will soon need to be verified in order to access the platform, adding the change will take effect in 30 days.

Twitter made the announcement in a tweet detailing an improved version of TweetDeck with new features. It was unclear if Twitter will charge users for both the new and old versions of TweetDeck.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Charging for TweetDeck, which was previously free and is widely used by businesses and news organizations to easily monitor content, could bring a revenue boost to Twitter, which has struggled to retain advertising revenue under billionaire Elon Musk’s ownership.

The move comes just days after Musk said that both verified and unverified users would have a limited number of posts they could read per day “to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.”

His announcement sparked a fierce backlash from users on Twitter, and ad experts said it would undermine new CEO Linda Yaccarino, who started in the role last month.

Individuals must pay $8 per month to verify their accounts, while organisations pay $1,000 per month.