Twitter Chief Executive Elon Musk plans to eliminate a Twitter feature that provides details about which device a tweet was sent from, information that has landed Android developers in hot water several times over the past few years.
Musk said in a tweet this morning that Twitter will eliminate the line that says “Twitter for iPhone” or “Twitter for Android” as it’s a “waste of screen space.” He said “no one knows” why the feature was introduced in the first place.
Device details have been used several times to catch employees promoting Android-based smartphones from their iPhones. In 2019, for example, a Huawei employee wished Huawei followers a happy new year, but used an iPhone to do so. A screenshot of the tweet went viral and the employees involved were demoted for “damaging the Huawei brand”.
Samsung employees have been tweeting Samsung’s iPhone promotions many times over the years, and celebrities have also gotten into trouble. Actress Gal Gadot, for example, sang the praises of her new Huawei Mate 10 Pro while tweeting from an iPhone.
It’s not clear when the device tags will be removed, but for now, the feature is still in place. Musk also said he has instructed Twitter employees to disable unspecified bloatware “microservices” since “less than 20% are needed for Twitter to function.”
And finally we will stop adding which device a tweet was written on (waste of screen space and calculations) below each tweet. Literally no one knows why we did this… — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022
Musk last week rolled out his new $8 Twitter Blue subscription service, which offers a verification badge that was previously limited to verified individuals. It resulted in immediate chaos with a number of people paying $8 to impersonate celebrity companies and accounts. Insulin maker Eli Lilly, for example, saw its shares fall more than 4 percent after a verified account impersonated the company and announced that the insulin was free. Another person impersonated LeBron James and announced he was looking for a trade, while another account impersonated Nintendo and posted an image of Mario making a rude gesture.
Twitter ended up temporarily stopping verification of Twitter Blue and people are unable to purchase Twitter Blue subscriptions at this time. Twitter is considering another “Official” verification badge, and it’s not yet known how the company will resolve the issue.
