Twitter quietly killed its secret ad-free version for fancy people

Influencers — they're just like the rest of us. Or, at least their Twitter ad-experience now is.

The minds behind everyone's favorite apocalypse-themed ticker tape confirmed today that Twitter has done away with a little-known version of the service that displayed no ads to certain high-value users. In other words, previously if your account met a certain list of criteria, then you never saw promoted tweets in your timeline.

Not anymore.

"Historically, people with high follower counts have seen fewer ads," a company spokesperson explained over email. "Recently, we've taken a more consistent approach of showing ads to everyone who uses Twitter and as a result, people with higher follower counts will notice an increase in the number of ads they're seeing."

Now, notably, in some cases "fewer ads" actually meant zero ads. One reporter at Mashable who had this rarified ad-free Twitter feed started seeing promoted tweets again this past Friday.

"Yeah it sucks," senior tech reporter Karissa Bell confirmed over Slack.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Mashable was able to confirm that Twitter starting experimenting with this change in May. Going forward, follower count won't be the only factor determining the number of promoted tweets a person sees. Other aspects of a person's usage, like how frequently and the way they use Twitter, will also play a part.

Regardless, however, there will be ads.

Importantly, this change doesn't mean that Barack Obama and Kylie Jenner are necessarily about to see their Twitter feeds clogged with promoted tweets. That's because, despite the change, not all users see the name number of ads.

That much, at least, remains unchanged.