Twitter’s making a change to its DM options, which will give users more control over who can and can’t message them in the app, with a new restriction option that will relate to Twitter Blue users specifically.
As per Twitter:
“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 will be sent to your message request inbox.”
Note that in the second element, Twitter notes that DMs ‘from verified users’ you don’t follow will go through to your message requests, not all users. That alludes to a new restriction on who’ll be able to send DMs to people they’re not connected to, with Twitter defaulting all users to a new system where only Twitter Blue or Verification for Organizations profiles will be able to send messages to non-connections. Though that’s not being implemented as a definitive restriction as yet.
To clarify, as per Twitter’s DM overview, anybody that you don’t follow in the app can currently send you a private message if:
- You’ve opted in to receive Direct Messages from anyone or;
- They’re Verified and you have opted in to receive Direct Messages from Verified users or;
- You’ve previously sent that person a Direct Message
So right now, users can still allow DMs from anybody, but as noted, Twitter is working to restrict this, so that only verified users will be able to send private messages to people who don’t follow them in the app.
That aligns with Twitter’s broader push towards verification as a means of filtering, ensuring that only paying subscribers get access to such functionality.
But interestingly, with this update, Twitter will now let users move Twitter Blue DMs to their secondary inbox as well – which likely suggests that at least some Twitter Blue users have been spamming people with unwanted DMs.
That could make Twitter’s broader push on DM restrictions less effective, if the spam is ‘coming from inside the house’, so to speak. But this new setting, enabling users to manage whether verified users, specifically, can DM them or not, is another step towards further restriction on how Twitter messages are used, which will push profiles to get verified if they want to use DMs as an outreach option.
Though it seems a bit confused. Twitter would obviously hope that verified users are the good ones, the real people, the profiles that they can trust. But if they’re also guilty of spamming people, that complicates matters, which is why it’s now having to come up with new restrictions to mitigate such impacts.
Either way, your Twitter DM settings are getting an upgrade, providing more ways to avoid spam, even from Twitter Blue accounts, while Twitter looks set to soon restrict non-subscribers from sending DMs to accounts that don’t follow them.