Instead, X is tweaking the visibility of replies in the context of a block. Previously, a user could block someone on X and still reply to their posts. And the person who was blocked wouldn’t be able to view that reply or know the person who had blocked them was engaging with their posts. That’s now being rolled back so that users will be able to see direct replies even if the person posting has blocked them. In a post from X’s engineering team, the company said the change is “part of our ongoing commitment to aligning the block feature with our principles as a public town square.”

The post also hinted that there may be more changes coming to blocks, which is one of the most widely used safety features on the service. “Our goal is to allow users to control their experience while maintaining the public visibility of posts,” the company said. That would seem to align with previous comments from Musk, who has said on multiple occasions that a public-facing “block” feature “makes no sense” and that “block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature,’ except for DMs.”

For now, the changes to blocking aren’t that drastic. In fact, they may even be welcomed by some users who want more visibility into what people are saying about them on the platform. But the fact that X is starting to change the visibility of previously blocked content could also be a sign of more significant changes to come.

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According to X, Grok relies on users’ posts to generate the text snippets. Some seem to be more news-focused, while others are summaries of conversations happening on the platform itself. One user posted a screenshot that showed stories about Apple’s earnings report and aid to Ukraine, as well as one for “Musk, Experts Debate National Debt,” which was a summary of a “candid online discussion” between Musk and other “prominent figures” on X.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s also remarkably similar to Moments, the longtime Twitter feature that curated authoritative tweets about important news and cultural moments on the platform. The feature, which was overseen by a team of human staffers, was killed in 2022.

Like other generative AI tools, Grok’s summaries come with a disclaimer. “This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time,” it says. “Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.” Grok, of course, doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to accurately interpreting current events. It previously generated a bizarre story suggesting that NBA player Klay Thompson went on a “vandalism spree” because it couldn’t understand what “throwing bricks” meant in the context of a basketball game.

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“Building on our commitment to free expression, we are also going to allow political advertising,” the company wrote. It added that it will “apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts,” including rules barring “the promotion of false or misleading content” as well as content “intended to undermine public confidence in an election.” X also said it’s planning to create a “global advertising transparency center” so that users can track political ads on the platform.

Twitter first banned political ads in 2019, with then-CEO Jack Dorsey saying that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” That began to change earlier this year when the company eased restrictions for “caused-based” ads, citing the importance of “public conversation around important topics.”

Now, it’s unclear if there is any kind of political ad that would be off-limits on X so long as it adheres to the company’s rules. Of note, X has yet to update support pages outlining its political ad rules, though it said in a blog post it was updating its civic integrity policy “to make sure we strike the right balance between tackling the most harmful types of content … and not censoring political debate.” X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The policy changes could have significant implications for the upcoming 2024 elections. X also said that it was in the process of staffing up its teams overseeing safety and elections policies, “to focus on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats.”

Opening to political ads could also be a major boon to X’s ad business, which has dropped 50 percent since Elon Musk’s takeover last year. Though conventional advertisers have increasingly shied away from the platform, political campaigns may have a harder time staying away ahead of a major election.

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The two will have the unenviable task of leading X’s safety efforts, including its attempts to reassure advertisers that the platform doesn’t monetize hate speech or terrorist content. The company said earlier this year it planned to hire 100 new safety employees after previously cutting much of its safety staff.

Head of safety has been a particularly fraught position since Elon Musk took over the company previously known as Twitter. Musk has previously clashed with his safety leads and McRoberts is the third person to hold the title in less than two years. Previously, Yoel Roth resigned shortly after the disastrous rollout of Twitter Blue in 2022. Roth was replaced by Ella Irwin, who resigned last year after Musk publicly criticized employees for enforcing policies around misgendering.

Not much is known about McRoberts, but she is apparently an existing member of X’s safety team (her X account is currently private and a LinkedIn profile appears to have been recently deleted). “During her time at X, she has led initiatives to increase transparency in our moderation practices through labels, improve security with passkeys, as well as building out our new Safety Center of Excellence in Austin,” X said in a statement.

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"As an influential member of the community on X, we've given you a complimentary subscription to X Premium subject to X Premium Terms by selecting this notice," it states.

A subsequent tweet from X provided an explanation: Any accounts with over 2,500 verified (ie, paid Premium or Premium+ blue tick subscribers) get Premium features for free, and any with over 5,000 get the ad-free Premium+ tier, also gratis.

Prior to this, the only users to get free Premium blue checks have been those with large follower numbers (in the million range, minimum), along with celebrities and corporations/media companies. The new move appears to be a way to bring influential users with lower follower counts (journalists largely) into the fold.

So what prompted this? X may have decided it needs more journalists with blue checks. In the wake of recent events (the Taiwan earthquake, Turkey elections, Baltimore bridge collapse), some users complained that X is no longer the gold standard breaking news platform that Twitter used to be.

That's likely because journalists, who discover or amplify such news, have seen reduced prominence while X's algorithms amplify blue check content and replies. That means know-nothing or shitcoin promoters with 25 followers who paid 8 bucks will appear atop replies, rather than an experienced journalist who can furnish useful, truthful information.

With the blue check now being a mark of shame in many cases, a fair number of the users who regained one aren't necessarily happy about it. "Shit, I've been forcibly bluechecked. How do I opt out," wrote @emptywheel. "oh no," Katie Notopoulos tweeted. "I am become bluecheck, promoter of shibacoin."

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Passkeys are considered more secure than passwords, because they're not vulnerable to phishing or social engineering schemes and are resistant to login theft. When users activate and set up a passkey login, they're creating a key pair that will serve as their digital authentication credential. The service offering the login option only has access to one of those keys, which it then has to pair to the other key stored locally on the user's device to verify their identity. The user only has to confirm that they're the one accessing their account through their biometric credentials or device passcode.

To enable passkeys on X, users will need to fire up their iOS app, and then go to "Settings and privacy" under "Your account." In "Security and account access," they can find Passkey under "Additional password protection." Unfortunately, X didn't say if and when the option will be available for Android users.

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The change comes shortly after X unexpectedly began adding blue checks to the accounts of “influential” users with at least 2,500 followers who pay for a premium subscription. While Elon Musk suggested that change was meant to be a perk, some of his critics — including formerly verified users — were less than pleased with the blue badge appearing on their accounts, lest others suspect them of actually paying for a subscription.

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The announcement follows a slightly cryptic post this week from X designer Andrea Conway. “Just called someone on X,” she posted, followed by four exploding-head emojis. Although that post didn’t clarify whether it was voice or video calls, it now appears she was referring to the latter.

It isn’t clear how X video calls would fill a burning need for consumers: The crowded video-chat landscape already includes Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Apple FaceTime and more. But as Musk and Yaccarino try to reshape the company, they increasingly view the platform formerly known as Twitter as expanding far beyond tweets into a real-time town square for various media, communications and payments.

“At the heart of the rebrand, X, we need to keep our minds open that it’s developing into this global town square that is fueled by free expression where the public gathers in real time,” Yaccarino said. “And I want to stop on that for a second because ‘in real time’ is what’s most important about the vibrancy of X and how people interact with it. And now it’s all in one seamless interface.”

One of the platform’s first moves into new areas was in long-form video. The company added a Twitter Blue perk in May that lets subscribers upload videos up to two hours long. Apple was an early adopter as it used the allotment to plug its series Silo by posting the entire first episode on the social platform. X also recently began paying content creators with enough of a following to generate income — with one user claiming to receive $24,000.

Yaccarino echoed the company’s previous comments about X as a payment platform. “Payments: There’s been a lot of talk about that,” she said. “Payments between you and a friend, between you and one of your creators. So there’s been a lot going on in the rebrand represented — really a liberation from Twitter. A liberation that allowed us to evolve past a legacy mindset and thinking and to reimagine how everyone, everyone on spaces who’s listening, everybody who’s watching around the world, it’s going to change how we congregate, how we entertain, how we transact all in one platform.”

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Clicking links to those websites from within X causes a significant delay in loading the web pages compared with navigating to the links from another browser or website. The delay, which seems to be about 5 seconds, was noticed by users on the Hacker News forum and later reported by The Washington Post.

It appears to be widespread and only affecting a handful of high-profile websites that Musk has publicly attacked in the past. The user who first reported the issues on Hacker News estimated the inexplicable delay first cropped up on August 4th, noting that it’s “so consistent it's obviously deliberate.” That's the same day Musk called the paper a "racial genocide apologist" in response to its reporting on South Africa.

For now, it’s unclear if there is a cause for the delay other than Musk’s personal grievances with these companies. But the lag only seems to be affecting websites that Musk has previously retaliated against. He previously blocked links to Substack, Mastodon, Threads and other competitors. Musk has also publicly attacked The Times, revoking the publication’s verified status shortly before the rollout of Twitter Blue (now called X Premium). The owner of X is also currently feuding with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over his launch of Twitter competitor, Threads.

In a statement, a spokesperson for The New York Times said the publication was aware of reports about the delay and had "made similar observations" of their own. "We have not received any explanation from the platform about this move," the spokesperson said. "While we don't know the rationale behind the application of this time delay, we would be concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for unclear reasons."

Substack founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi also criticized the move. "Substack was created in direct response to this kind of behavior by social media companies," they wrote in a statement. "Writers cannot build sustainable businesses if their connection to their audience depends on unreliable platforms that have proven they are willing to make changes that are hostile to the people who use them. While we hope that Twitter will reverse its decision to institute a delay on Substack links, our focus is on building Substack."

As usual, X didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company has largely stopped replying to press inquiries since Elon Musk fired its communications staff shortly after taking over the company.

Update, August 15th, 2023, 1 pm PT: This story has been updated to include responses from The New York Times and Substack.

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The news is not unexpected, as code spotted earlier this year by researcher Jane Manchun Wong indicated that X Pro was on its way to becoming a paid app. However, the change only appears to apply to the new version, but not the older (better) version, at least until it's deprecated.

X has been testing the new version since last year, with changes like "a full Tweet composer, new advanced search features, new column types, and a new way to group columns into clean workspaces," the company said at the time. Some power users aren't loving it, though, as it's more difficult to clear columns and perform other common actions.

The company has previously pondered a TweetDeck subscription service, asking users in 2017 if they'd be willing to pay up to $20 per month for a "more advanced TweetDeck experience." The new action is part of Elon Musk's attempt to monetize the app with Blue subscriptions, but the service only had about 700,000 subscribers as of last June. Musk has also vowed to make X an "everything app" used for content creation, payments and shopping on top of social networking.

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