Twitter’s Testing New Restrictions on Who You Can DM in the App

Twitter’s working on a new anti-spam measure, or a Twitter Blue incentive, depending on how you look at it.

According to the latest back-end code finding in the app, Twitter’s looking to implement new restrictions on who can send DMs in the app, with only Twitter Blue users set to be allowed to send DM requests to users who don’t follow them.

As you can see in this example pop-up, shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Twitter’s new DM restrictions would stop users from sending a DM to another user that isn’t already following them in the app.

Which could limit your messaging options, especially if you use Twitter DMs for any kind of outreach. Twitter’s been an important connective tool for many in this respect, providing direct access to people who may be interested in future partnerships or collaborations. But unless you want to pay the $8 per month, that could be no more – though the most likely impact will be that users will just search the same people out on other platforms and try to contact them there instead.

But it could work as an anti-spam measure, by limiting the use of DMs as a spammer tool. If spammers have to pay to send you their junk mail, they’ll be less likely to do it, which could be somewhat effective, even if it can easily be mitigated by them signing up to Twitter Blue.

And that is a key aim of the subscription program, to make spamming and scamming in the app more cost prohibitive, as a means to combat the influx of tweeted rubbish. In this sense, maybe this will be a good thing, which will limit the random invites and notifications in your DM stream.

Twitter’s also looking to look to limit who can add people to a DM group in the same way.

Which is another anti-spam measure, as people regularly get invited to random groups in the app, as a means to promote spam, scams, or just bizarre group chats.

It actually seems like it could provide some relief on this front – though again, it would also limit your direct connection options in the app, which could impact some interactions.

But right now, with only 0.28% of Twitter users signed up to Twitter Blue, it would restrict message spam in the app. Maybe worth a test, at the least.