Elon Musk Announces Significant Changes to X. Here's What to Know

Elon Musk has announced new changes to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that will allow certain accounts to unlock free premium features. Posting on the platform Thursday, the 52-year old tech billionaire, and TIME's 2021 Person of the Year, said: "Going forward, all X accounts with over 2500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5000 will get Premium for free." Previously, X Premium features would cost a user 8 per month and include the ability to share longer posts and video uploads, have larger reply prioritization, and see fewer adverts on their timeline. Meanwhile X Premium users have all the features of Premium with no adverts in the For You and Following timelines, as well as access to generative artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. These models are the only way users can now display a blue checkmark that once denoted a verified account before the Tesla and SpaceX CEO acquired Twitter Inc for 44bn in April 2022.