The IT Nerd

Outages at Twitter are clearly becoming more and more frequent. Besides this outage and this one during the Super Bowl as well as this one last week, we have another one today as documented by Down Detector:

This highlights the fact that Twitter is extremely unstable and Elon Musk is unwilling or more likely unable to rectify the situation. Thus you should fully expect these sort of outages to become the norm. And Elon’s life to become more difficult.

Having said that, this was not the worst thing to happen to Twitter users in the last 24 hours. This was:

Twitter Blue subscribers will be the platform’s only users able to use text messages as a two-factor authentication method, Twitter announced Friday. 

The change will take place on March 20. Twitter users will have two other ways to authenticate their Twitter log-ins at no cost: an authentication mobile app and a security key. 

Two factor authentication, or 2FA, requires users to type in their password and then enter a code or security key to access their accounts. It is one of the primary methods for users to keep their Twitter account secure. 

“While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors,” the company said in a blog post Friday. “So starting today, we will no longer allow accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers.”

To be frank, that’s likely BS. What is more likely to be true is that Elon is trying to find new ways to force people to sign up to Twitter Blue, seeing as next to nobody has subscribed. Making a security feature something that you have to pay for is incredibly cynical. But it shows how desperate Elon is for cash.

By the way, there’s also this:

Twitter said non-subscribers will have 30 days to disable the text method and enroll in another way to sign in using 2FA. Disabling text message 2FA won’t automatically disassociate the user’s phone number from their account, Twitter said.

To borrow an Among Us phrase, that sounds a bit “sus“. Twitter got into serious trouble prior to Elon taking over for using phone numbers associated with 2FA for purposes other than 2FA. If Elon is even considering going down that road again, I am 99% sure that it will end badly for him. But I guess we’ll see what he’s up to. And whether the blow back from this will force him into yet another u-turn.

This entry was posted on February 18, 2023 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.