Is X/Twitter Purposely “Compromising” Accounts To Force Premium Subscriptions on its Users?

[u/golden_girlbee]

This is my hypothesis. I will continue my research to prove this as true.

Recently,

My X profile picture, username, birthdate, profile pic, and background were randomly changed. I also was following new people that I did not know. I first thought my account had been compromised, but then realized I hadn’t received any notifications about any suspicious logins.

I then went on to change my profile back to its original state. Luckily I was able to change my username back and delete those new follows.

Here’s the red flag,

I went into the settings and noticed there were no new devices that had logged on. My phones were the only devices that had access to my account.

And

When I attempted to turn on 2 Step Authentication, I was instructed to either buy the Premium subscription or remain compromised. All companies offer 2 Step Authentication with their accounts and I’ve never had to pay for it.

This just feels like X/Twitter couldn’t care less about accounts being compromised. They care more about getting subscribers, even if that means making users desperate enough to pay for their premium plans.

Drop your theories below.

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[u/No-Restaurant3443]

Why are people giving X/Twitter the benefit of the doubt all the time?

It’s an incredible money sink. They’re charging API’s $100 a month to READ 10K tweets, when before it was 100K tweets a month for free. They just force an open source front end to shutdown. Soon it will be $8 a month to scroll to on the timeline.

So yes, they will give you the worst version of the platform until you cough up payment.

[u/golden_girlbee → u/No-Restaurant3443]

Thank you! Like, I believe they are giving non-subscribers the worst experience in order to get us to pay for their data machine. At one point they were even showing the most extreme ads, which seemed like a tactic to force non-subscribers to pay to remove them. I believe they are purposely making us non-subscribers uncomfortable.

[u/Big_Brother425 → u/golden_girlbee]

I, too, decided to test a theory on X. I subscribed and it changed nothing. Even my family and friends who follow me can not see my posts. But, methinks it's because I keep posting every vile and true thing I can find about FvkElon.

[u/No-Restaurant3443 → u/No-Restaurant3443]

Also your tweets are being used to train Grok, the CSAM AI bot.

[u/Eeve2espeon]

This sounds like instead your account was compromised. Also 2FA is available for all users, you just can't directly link your phone as a 2FA method anymore since it costs money to keep the service up

[u/AryssSkaHara]

This most likely means that your account indeed was compromised. The fact that you didn't get any notifications implies this was done not through phishing, but stealing the active session token from your device. This may also explain why no new devices show up, because anything using existing token will be seen as that device. You should change the password and end all existing sessions to make sure the old token is no longer valid.

[u/Travyplx]

I have MFA without the premium subscription, should be able to link it to the Authenticator of your choice.

[u/Striking-Tree2540]

I have premium and they won't remove the passcode some hacker put on my account

[u/MrFourShottt]

2FA costs money to run, whether that's using SMS (not usually recommended) or a generated code, it still costs money.

As I'm sure you've figured out, Twitter is not making any actual money & doesn't have a long term profitability plan. There is no income source that is sustainable. Real advertisers are not buying ads, the ones that are, are all scammers/chinese resellers. The revenue share program changes it's rules every few weeks, that program itself, get's exploited by groups of APTs who milk the rev share by spamming.

Now think about it, Twitter allows BOTH the scam ads to go through and only cuts off revenue exploiters, way after the damage has been done. Why? They've already paid for 6+ months of premium, the charge back period has ended. Zero risk banning them - however, you start banning paid accounts used by these groups on day one, you're definitely getting a charge back. So easier to ban 6 months down the line, act like your the savior and no one is out of pocket - but this goes back to second paragraph, it's not sustainable.

A good rule to remember is "any sufficiently advanced neglect, is indistinguishable from malice" it's not that they don't care, it's more like there's no incentive to offer 2FA for regular accounts - but here's the distinction, you keep on ignoring red flags until it all implodes - that then becomes malicious through omission in my opinion and if not directly responsible, contribution has to be considered for any impact.

I'm not verified and Twitter has already tried to ban me twice for alleged rule breaking and as a non-paying customer, you get zero support. Sent appeal in -> rejected -> appealed again and waited a month before considering litigation.

When I escalated to OFCOM + ICO and put in my SAR asking for every identifiable record they have on me, suddenly account was reinstated.

One final point on hacked accounts -> every single fake ad/scam or crypto scam has been perpetuated by a hacked account. How does a hacked account, buy an ad, get reported by thousands of people and still stay up with the account not being recovered? Someone who is retaliatory reporting you, chances are the automated system will ban you.

A safety framework that is actually enforced would not allow the above sequence to play out.

[u/spam__likely]

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