Twitter finally taking action against spam DMs

After a tumultuous few weeks, Twitter is moving to fix a long-standing problem on the platform as it aims to cull spam messages from users’ direct messages.

It’s not often that a social media platform admits to having a spam problem, and after weeks of spam messages plaguing some users, Twitter might finally have a solution.

The new method of messages announced via Twitter Support is quite similar to how Instagram currently manages itself. For people that you know, these DMs will land straight into your Twitter’s “primary inbox”. Anything else will need to be verified by yourself before moving it over to the main inbox.

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…

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 13, 2023

Interestingly, Twitter specifically mentions “messages from verified users“, indicating that a large portion of spam was coming from the new verification system. Twitter Blue allows anyone who pays $8 a month to acquire a verified check, making them look legitimate. However, this has been abused multiple times since its launch and even tanked the stock prices of a company that supplies insulin.

Gauging user reaction on Twitter is a bit tougher than usual, as a lot of the responses underneath now appear to be boosted Twitter Blue users.

However, moving to the quote tweet responses has revealed that the reaction is a little less positive. One user has pointed out that the social platform already had this feature implemented via its “Filter low-quality messages” option.

This has literally always been how DMs work. It's how they work right now. https://t.co/VMsQQBj84Z pic.twitter.com/22tVKtEWMK

— A.A. Ron (@AaronTheH on Threads) (@AaronTheH) July 13, 2023

Once implemented, everyone who had open DMs will be moved over to this setting according to the announcement. This can be reverted if you want.

Twitter fixing DMs after spam takes over

Musk’s company has had a troublesome few weeks, including the launch of Meta’s Threads. Threads has seen over 100 million people sign up to it in less than a week, with the direct connectivity to Instagram drawing a lot of people in.

Just before it launched, Twitter placed a restriction on all users, preventing them from seeing past a certain number of posts. On top of this, the company has come under fire again with a $500 million lawsuit from ex-employees, which alleges that severance pay hasn’t been paid out yet.