Elon Musk has put TweetDeck behind a paywall. Is this the last straw for Twitter users?

Twitter's blue bird is seen on its headquarters building in San Francisco, July 24, 2023, prior to being rebranded to X. - Copyright Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP Photo

By Euronews

Published on 16/08/2023 - 16:28

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Social media users lamented that TweetDeck - a dashboard service to better display tweets now known as X Pro - was put behind a paywall.

Much to the chagrin of many social media users, Elon Musk appears to have moved TweetDeck behind a paywall.

The service, which used to be an independent app and free to use, had been renamed as X Pro by the billionaire following Twitter’s rebrand to X last month.

As of Wednesday, the URL tweetdeck.twitter.com now takes users to an X premium Blue sign up that costs a little more than €9 a month.

TweetDeck was released more than a decade ago as a third party platform and acquired by Twitter in 2011. It was used as a dashboard to better view and interact with Tweets.

Users could monitor multiple accounts, post and react from the website or app, as well as view lists, trends, hashtags and more in separate columns.

TweetDeck is the latest service on X to move behind a paywall since Musk acquired Twitter late last year.

One of his early changes to the platform was to have users pay for a verified Twitter account, a move that was subject to much criticism at the time. In a bid to entice users to pay for its services, a verified Twitter subscription allowed accounts to write longer posts and format them as well as rank higher in conversations.

He also brought back several banned users, including reinstating the account of former US president Donald Trump, and fired most of the staff at the social media platform.

Many users complained on Wednesday that losing TweetDeck might make them leave the platform for good.

In the last few weeks, Twitter has moved forward with a rebrand to X, dropping the iconic bird logo on the headquarters and social media website and apps in favour of a new X icon.

The platform’s support team had previously stated that changes were coming to TweetDeck as well.

They rolled out the new version of the service in early July and stated then that it would then only be accessible for verified users in 30 days. It appears that they have followed through on that.

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