Elon Musk to relaunch Twitter's blue check subscription, but why is Twitter in India slow?

Musk recently asserted in a tweet that Twitter refresh rates in countries like India and Indonesia might be five to ten times lower than in the US. While due to a slight delay from his original projected timeframe, billionaire Elon Musk also disclosed on Tuesday that Twitter's coveted "blue check" membership services would be relaunched on November 29th (1).

Elon Musk stated in a tweet that the reason for delaying the relaunch of Blue Verified until November 29th was to ensure its stability. With the new version, changing a person's verified name will result in losing the blue check until Twitter confirms the name complies with its terms of service.

Before now, only verified accounts of public figures like journalists, famous people, politicians, and other individuals in the media have been given the coveted blue check mark. But earlier this week, Twitter launched a subscription option that anyone willing to pay can use to increase revenue as Musk battles to keep advertisers on board.

The CEO of Tesla (2) also stated last week that Twitter Blue will resume at the end of the next week and that the recently announced $8 blue check subscription from Twitter was suspended on Friday due to the proliferation of bogus accounts. After taking control of the social media giant in a $44 billion transaction (3), Musk modified, but why is the Twitter app in India slow?

Elon Musk is certain that the Android app for Twitter is slow in nations like Indonesia and India, and he is also determined to improve it. Additionally, the billionaire's comments regarding Twitter's functionality on Android are stirring up controversy.

At the same time, he received criticism from Twitter staff members on several occasions during the past week, including from a few Android app engineers who claimed Musk's evaluation was unreliable. Musk, though, is not in the mood to accept or deal with criticism, and he has fired the engineers who pushed back against him on the platforms.

According to a different allegation, people have even been fired for making jokes about their new employer in work-related Slack chats (4). One of the veteran engineers, Eric Frohnhoefer, fired after challenging Musk on Twitter, is a good example.

According to sources, Eric (5), the engineer who disagreed with Musk on Twitter, was not affected by the layoffs that resulted in the loss of more than 3000 jobs worldwide. Musk announced that Eric had been fired. He was fired because he disagreed with Musk on Twitter, and Musk has since removed the tweet in which he claimed to have fired the engineer for doing so.

When a tweet on Twitter started to load slowly, it caused a social media platform outage, which is when Musk and Eric's fight started. Musk afterward posted an apology for Twitter's extreme delay in many regions. Eric later reshared Musk's tweet and added a remark in which he claimed to have spent six years developing Twitter for Android and could thus claim that Musk was mistaken.

Later, Musk and Eric got into a heated argument over Twitter, resulting in Eric being fired. The two were arguing about the technical problems Twitter was having. At one point, Musk became irate with Eric's response and asked him about Twitter's Sunday performance, saying that Twitter is slow on Android; what have you done to fix that?

The Twitter thread was joined by others who sided with Musk and slammed Eric for debating Musk on a public platform. The argument lasted for three hours and grew murkier with each passing second. After responding that Musk should contact him privately through email or Slack, Musk revealed that he had sacked Eric. Eric sent Musk a saluting emoji in response.

Eric stated to Forbes (6) that he had not received official notice of his termination from the company and that he could not access his laptop after it was turned off. The engineer, 41, has been a member of Twitter for more than eight years; therefore, it was difficult for him to accept that his relationship with the firm had ended so suddenly.

Returning to the issue of Twitter's slow performance in India, Musk tweeted that the platform was not operating as it should in several global locations and that the speed of the application in countries like India and Indonesia (7) was significantly lower than that in the US. Unlike India, where refreshing Twitter may take between 10 and 20 seconds, it does so in the US in about 2 seconds.

The new CEO of Twitter suggested that lengthy communications or poor batching may be to blame. According to the server control team, every app was slow, even on the newest iPhone in India and many other countries. There are 1200 microservices server-side (8), of which 40 are essential to Twitter's functioning. Musk added this information in a later tweet in response to former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer (9).

An RPC (Remote Procedure Call) (10) is a software communication protocol that enables applications like Twitter to request service from another computer over a connected network. Schroepfer has previously questioned Musk's claim that 1,200 RPCs are the primary cause of Twitter's slowdown in many countries.

Trimming the 1200 number, lowering data consumption, serializing trips, and streamlining the app is necessary for improving speed and usage. In a separate tweet, Musk also mentioned that there are regions of the world where refreshing Twitter could take up to 30 seconds.

In response to Musk's assertions, several Android programmers and developers outside of Twitter have argued that other elements, such as service availability and edge caching, may impact the speed of apps like Twitter in countries like India.

Since Elon Musk acquired total company control, Twitter has been on the trend. His first move was to clean up the top shelf and add several features that have kept it in the public eye as people try to comprehend and predict his next movements.

Musk is pushing down on his defense of firing staff members who questioned him while also writing in a tweet that he regrets doing so and that their enormous talent will undoubtedly be put to great use elsewhere.