They don’t need a blue thing just to talk. They can just turn the feature off and they will be available to receive messages again from their customers. It’s just as simple as it was earlier to keep your messages open or closed to general public.
It is not meant for companies and companies who regularly talk to customers on twitter will definitely turn this feature off. So you will likely still be able to talk with any company that wants to talk with its customers on twitter.
It is meant for regular folks who get lot of unsolicited spam in their inboxes. It puts an immediate stop to those. So in that sense, it’s a tricky but good move.
I think I remember seeing Reddit’s comment somewhere that remindme bot will keep working.
If it can be unpaywalled, it can usually be found on https://archive.ph. If it’s not already there, you can always try saving the article you’re trying to see there.