Twitter launches paid subscription service for people it somehow hasn't taken enough from already
There’s a common refrain that pops up from time to time on social media, usually when something mind-shatteringly dumb or amusing happens on Twitter: “I can’t believe this site is free.” Well, not any longer, suckers: Per Variety, Twitter has announced that it’s rolling out a new subscription version of the web site where we all go to feel like shit/make other people feel like shit. Twitter Blue will provide a number of features to anyone willing to pony up ~$3 a month for it, including a fairly crappy editing function, dedicated customer support, and a “Reader” mode allowing you to turn long threads into single readable blocks just like you can already do with a million other apps and services. It also comes with the warm satisfaction of knowing that you’re exactly the kind of chump willing to pay Twitter for all the ways it’s screwing up your brain, so that’s y’know, cool, too.
Even that much-requested edit function is likely to have all the impact of a wet fart in a swimming pool, though; what you’re really buying is a customizable edit timer that delays your tweets from sending for up to 30 seconds, presumably giving you a window to just miss fixing some goddamn typo or another. (And no, you still can’t change them once they’re live.) Not that American users will be able to luxuriate in these indulgences just yet, anyway: Twitter Blue is apparently being launched today in Canada and Australia, where users will get to enjoy a user experience that still has 8 million ads and “promoted” tweets shoved into it, because that stuff’s definitely not going anywhere. The company promises that it’ll be bringing this wonderland of paid delights to other regions “in the near future.”
Meanwhile, Twitter also made it clear that regular, non-paid Twitter isn’t going anywhere, since they’d presumably hate to deny us the grim satisfaction of knowing that, for all the hell that social media puts us through, at least we’re not paying to suffer through it.