An option to pay to get rid of ads altogether has been something Twitter users have been expressing a desire for since at least the introduction of the original Twitter paid subscription, which provided a number of features to users but did nothing to change the rate at which they saw ads on the site. Musk previously tipped that there would be a fully ad-free higher tier subscription coming in 2023 in mid-December last year. At the time, Musk also said Blue subscribers at the existing rate would see half the ads of free users.
Musk’s acknowledgement of the sorry state of ads on Twitter comes just after he oversaw the death of the network’s support for third-party clients. Twitter cut off API access for those clients beginning last week, starting by suddenly revoking access for the largest clients, including Tweetbot and Twitterific, and then updated its developer guidelines earlier this week to fully cut off access for all such clients.