ranson
This is an interesting choice with somewhat dubious reasoning: pay us $8 for the continuing privilege of using the least secure MFA mechanism.
Most likely, the SMS's were too costly for Elon's liking, while Authenticator apps are both more secure and effectively free for Twitter to support. So from a financial perspective, it makes a lot of sense. From a security posture, forcing users off of SMS and over to an Authenticator app is a good long-term decision.
However, the outright disabling of nonconforming users' existing SMS MFA on March 20 is a terrible idea, as it will expose what is likely millions and millions of accounts to being compromised, should their passwords have been previously harvested. This will particularly impact users who rarely access Twitter anymore, if at all. A better approach here would be to retain the SMS MFA on those users indefinitely, but require them to explicitly disable MFA or switch to an Authenticator app the next time they access Twitter after 3/20. You should never just turn someone's MFA off without their explicit approval.
