Twitter users have had a wild ride since Musk took over. Claims that Twitter will shut down in a few days started to emerge citing ex-employees of the company. However, Elon Musk says the abundance of coverage surrounding Twitter has just made it even more popular, driving usage to record levels. FYI: It’s been a few months already and apart from the occasional Twitter server farts, things appear to be running just fine.
The latest drama unfolding is now related to the removal of SMS-based 2FA for users who aren’t subscribed to Twitter Blue. Musk claims “Twitter is getting scammed by phone companies for $60M/year of fake 2FA SMS messages.” However, we’d take that with a grain of salt because there are no actual numbers to look at publicly. At this point, Musk, like every other mainstream outlet is like “trust me bro, I know the unnamed source.”
Whatever the case, SMS-based 2FA has proven to be inferior when compared to the alternative, which is authentication apps. In fact, the big media outlet, The Verge tried telling users to stop using SMS-based 2FA for securing their accounts. But looks like such articles went unnoticed by the masses given the current outage.
Another mind-numbing ‘FAT L’ comes from Elon-hating tech outlets that want you to believe that locking SMS-based 2FA behind a paywall is some perk for Twitter Blue subscribers. The only reason it’s still available for Blue subscribers is so that Twitter can cut down its expenses as carriers won’t be able to exploit the system as they have been doing all this while.
So while the techies aren’t doing their job to emphasize that losing out on SMS-based 2FA for securing your Twitter account isn’t a loss, but a gain, we’ll do it for them. Authentication apps like Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator offer better security. Plus, they are free. So, yeah, you don’t need to pay to keep your Twitter account secure like some personalities would want you to believe. Case in point:
TL;DR
Don’t fall for the bullshit. It would be a good move on your part to set up an Authentication app. We’d recommend Microsoft Authenticator over Google’s offering as it’s just better and foolproof. Keep your Twitter account and your mind secure by avoiding the mainstream narrative.
