Twitter flew the coup, and the company is about to close the window on its potential return for good. Over the weekend, the official X Safety account posted that it will require any user who is currently using a security key as their two-factor authentication method to re-enroll because those keys are tied to the old Twitter.com domain. Users will have until November 10 to make the move, at which point, the company claims it will retire Twitter.com
“By November 10, we’re asking all accounts that use a security key as their two factor authentication (2FA) method to re-enroll their key to continue accessing X. You can re-enroll your existing security key, or enroll a new one,” X Safety said, later clarifying that “This change is not related to any security concern, and only impacts Yubikeys and passkeys – not other 2FA methods (such as authenticator apps). Security keys enrolled as a 2FA method are currently tied to the twitter[.]com domain. Re-enrolling your security key will associate them with x[.]com, allowing us to retire the Twitter domain.”
Users who are affected by this change are supposed to get a prompt encouraging them to re-enroll, so keep an eye out for that. Otherwise, users can initiate the re-enrollment process on their own by going into their account settings, selecting “Security and account access,” and selecting “Two-factor authentication.”
The death of the old Twitter has been both rapid in how quickly the type of content that dominates the platform shifted under the leadership of owner Elon Musk, and quite slow in removing some of the legacy assets associated with the old bird app. Two-factor was one of the final bits of that. The Verge points out that one of the other hangers on can be found on the page for embedding X posts, where the old Twitter logo still exists.
But there’s no doubt that it’s Musk’s platform now. There are new reminders every day. For instance, currently, X users are being inundated with recommended posts that have nothing to do with the people they follow—an issue that Musk chalked up to “a significant bug in the X For You algorithm.” Last week, Musk made a similar post, stating, “My apologies for frustrations with the X algorithm. We are working hard to fix the problem.”
Musk has also been quietly battling some of the changes being made by Nikita Bier, the company’s newest head of product, who has made quality of life improvements to the app that have largely been viewed as positive—except by people like Nazi accounts who got banned. Don’t worry, though, Musk apparently stepped in and reinstated them. He’s also pushed back against the idea that issuing payouts to users based on how made they can make other users (“engagement”) is a bad idea. So it’ll be interesting to see how long Bier stays at the company, because he’s created an interesting conundrum for Musk: He’s possibly making the platform better, but at the expense of Musk’s own ideas.
