Elon Musk says only verified, premium users can participate in polls on X

Elon Musk on Sunday announced that X (formerly Twitter) will soon allow only verified, premium users to participate in polls across subjects, including political issues, on the platforms to avoid bots from swaying the results. When writer-entrepreneur Brian Krassenstein posted that X has to make the option to only allow for blue checkmarks to participate in polls, Musk said it is coming soon. Polls on X allow users to post a question with different options.

“We’re changing polls to allow votes only by verified users. That’s critical to avoid polls getting bot-spammed on controversial issues,” the billionaire said. “We shut down a lot of bots this week,” the tech billionaire added.

X earlier announced that it would permit political advertising on its site from political parties and candidates in the US and expand its elections and safety team before the 2024 presidential election. The social media network said it will increase its teams to combat “emerging threats” and content manipulation. X stated that it is permitting political ads with the aim of “building on our commitment to free expression.” “We should empower our users to express their opinions and openly debate during elections, in line with our commitment to protecting freedom of expression,” it added.

Meanwhile, days after boosting an antisemitic campaign to ban the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from X, the “free-speech absolutist” Musk proposed polling the social media platform’s users on booting the civil rights advocacy group from the site formerly known as Twitter. “The ADL has done a lot of good work in prior decades, but has been overzealous in recent years & hijacked by the woke mind virus,” Musk said on Sunday.

The new restriction for polls will come sooner or later than the ability to make calls on X. Elon Musk last month announced that X will soon have the feature to let users make calls without needing phone numbers. Musk said that X users will not be required to save phone numbers as the platform itself will act as what he described as a global address book. He also said that this new feature will work on almost all platforms, which includes iOS, Android, Mac and Windows PCs.

— Written with inputs from IANS